The Impact of ECAP Parameters on the Structural and Mechanical Behavior of Pure Mg: A Combination of Experimental and Machine Learning Approaches

Commercial pure Mg specimens were processed through equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) using two dies with die angles of 90° and 120°. Mg billets were processed up to four passes via different route types. Machine learning (ML) techniques were adopted to estimate the ECAP parameters and verify the experimental findings. Several ML techniques were employed to estimate the effect ECAP parameters of pure Mg on microstructural evolution, Vicker’s microhardness (HV), and tensile properties for ECAP billets and their as-annealed (AA) counterparts. Electron back-scatter diffraction (EBSD) was applied to determine the structural evolution and crystallographic texture both prior to and following the ECAP process for the Mg billets. EBSD analysis showed that route Bc is the most effective route in grain refinement, and four passes of route Bc experienced a significant refinement of 86% compared to the AA condition. Furthermore, the crystallographic texture showed that four passes of route Bc produced the most robust texture that was greater than 26.21 times random. ML findings revealed that the grain size demonstrated a strong correlation of −0.67 with rising number of passes, while ϕ affected the grain size strongly with 0.83. When adopting a 90°-die to accumulate the plastic strain up to 4Bc, the subsequent HV was indeed 111% higher than that of the AA equivalent. From ML findings it was clear that the number of passes was the most significant parameter on the Mg HV values, while ECAP channel angle (ϕ) revealed high correlation factor with HV values as well. Furthermore, four passes of route Bc with ϕ = 90° and 120° led to a significant increase of the tensile strength by 44.7%% and 35.7%, respectively, compared to the AA counterpart. ML findings revealed that the tensile strength was affected by the increasing number of passes with a strong correlation of 0.81, while affecting ductility moderately with 0.47.