International Scholarly Research Network ISRN Metallurgy Volume 2012, Article ID 165082, 15 pages doi:10.5402/2012/165082 Review Article Alloy Designation, Processing, and Use of AA6XXX Series Aluminium Alloys Prantik Mukhopadhyay Electron Microscope Group, Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory, Kanchanbagh, Hyderabad 500058, India Correspondence should be addressed to Prantik Mukhopadhyay,
[email protected] Received 1 February 2012; Accepted 23 February 2012 Academic Editors: R. Hebert and Y. Yamabe-Mitarai Copyright © 2012 Prantik Mukhopadhyay. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The strength-to-weight ratio offered by AA6XXX alloys and their enhanced mechanical properties have become crucial criteria for their use in light weight military vehicles, rockets, missiles, aircrafts, and cars, used for both defence and civil purpose. The focus of this review paper is to put together the latest knowledge available from various sources on alloy design, industrial processing, development of properties, and potential use of AA6XXX alloys. The direct chill (DC) cast AA6XXX wrought alloys which are subsequently processed by fabrication process like hot working, cold working, process annealing, and age hardening heat treatments are the foci of this review though designation section also contains the designations of cast alloys to provide the reader a broad overview on designation. World-wide accepted designations are briefly tabled along with their alloying elements. The effects of the alloying elements which are generally used for AA6XXX wrought alloys are discussed incorporating their interactions during wrought AA6XXX alloy fabrication.