ORIGINAL ARTICLE Equal channel angular sheet extrusion (ECASE) as a precursor of heterogeneity in an AA6063-T6 alloy Jairo Alberto Muñoz 1 & Oscar Fabián Higuera 2 & Vanina Tartalini 1 & Pablo Risso 1 & Martina Avalos 1 & Raúl E. Bolmaro 1 Received: 22 November 2018 /Accepted: 4 February 2019 # Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract We study the deformation inducing heterogeneity in an aluminum alloy 6063-T6 in the form of a sheet processed at room temperature by equal channel angular sheet extrusion (ECASE) up to a maximum equivalent strain of 1.86 following route C. The through thickness strain distribution showed higher strains in the edge vicinities than in the sheet core. The texture was heterogeneous between the edges and the sheet core with a strong cube component in the initial deformation stages, and a rolling texture with the S component in the sheet edges. Different microstructural characteristics, like grain size, average misorientation, and fraction of high angle grain boundaries (HAGB), decreased by increasing the deformation. The geometrically necessary dislocation (GND) calculations corroborated the existence of a heterogeneous microstructure along the sheet thickness, giving rise to gradients of plastic deformation which allowed to obtain a good strength-ductility relationship. It was demonstrated that ECASE process was a good alternative to produce heterogeneous microstructures. The material heterogeneity was found not to be randomly distributed across the sheet thickness but rather showing higher dislocation concentration and bigger grain size reductions in the edge’ s vicinities than in its middle zone. Keywords Aluminum alloy . Strain . Tensile test . Texture . EBSD . Dislocations . X-ray 1 Introduction Ultra-fine grain materials (UFGM) via severe plastic deforma- tion (SPD) have been at the cutting edge of the material sci- ence for quite a while. Materials processed by SPD techniques present interesting behaviors, not only because of the free porosity of the material but also for the mechanical properties. However, SPD leads to an increase in the strength while si- multaneously reducing the homogeneous deformation zone because of reduction of strain hardening capacity leading to lower ductility [1, 2]. Another issue related with the produc- tion of UFGM is the low amount of high-quality material produced by SPD techniques, since the processing require- ments (pressure, friction, and processing tool strength) highly increase with the processed material volume. Some new SPD techniques based on the original principles of shear strain have been proposed for solving this problem. Equal channel angular rolling (ECAR) [3] and equal channel Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-019-03425-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Jairo Alberto Muñoz munoz@ifir-conicet.gov.ar Oscar Fabián Higuera oscarhiguera@mail.uniatlantico.edu.co Vanina Tartalini tartalini@ifir-conicet.gov.ar Pablo Risso risso@ifir-conicet.gov.ar Martina Avalos avalos@ifir-conicet.gov.ar Raúl E. Bolmaro bolmaro@ifir-conicet.gov.ar 1 Instituto de Física Rosario, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas-CONICET, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Ocampo y Esmeralda, 2000 Rosario, Argentina 2 Faculty of Engineering, Mechanical Engineering Program, Universidad del Atlántico, Barranquilla, Colombia The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-019-03425-7