2026 aluminum alloy was compressed in a temperature range of 300-450 ℃ and strain rate range of 0.01-10 s^-1. The correlation between compression conditions and microstructural evolution after solution and aging heat treatment was investigated. It is found that the recrystallization and precipitation behavior after heat treatment are associated with the temperature compensated strain rate Z value during hot deformation. Under low Z parameter condition, a small quantity of free recrystallized grains are formed, and the well formed subgrains with clean high-angle boundaries and coarse precipitates seem to be remained during heat treatment. Under high Z parameter condition, a large number of fine equiaxed recrystallized grains are produced, and a high dislocation density with poorly developed cellularity and considerable fine dynamic precipitates are replaced by the well formed subgrains and relatively coarse precipitates after heat treatment. The average recrystallized grain size after heat treatment decreases with increasing Z value and a quantitative relation between the average grain size and the Z value is obtained.
The hot compression tests of Al-Zn-Mg-Cu-Zr aluminum alloys （7056 alloy and 7150 alloy） were performed in a temperature range from 300 to 450 °C and at strain rate range from 0.01 to 10 s-1. The results show that the true stress-true strain curves exhibit a peak stress at a critical strain, then the flow stresses decrease monotonically until high strains, showing a dynamic flow softening. The peak stresses depend on the temperature compensated strain rate, which can be represented by the Zener-Hollomon parameter Z in the hyperbolic-sine equation with hot deformation activation energy of 244.64 kJ/mol for 7056 alloy and 229.75 kJ/mol for 7150 alloy, respectively, while the peak stresses for the former are lower than those for the latter under the similar compression condition. The deformed microstructures consist of a great amount of precipitates within subgrains in the elongated grains at high Z value and exhibit well formed subgrains in the recrystallized grains at low Z value. The smaller subgrains and greater density of fine precipitates in 7150 alloy are responsible for the high peak stresses because of the substructural strengthening and precipitating hardening compared with 7056 alloy.
