The effect of nanostructural hierarchy on the mechanical properties of aluminium alloys during deformation processes

New generation of lightweight structures and technologies enables the development of materials to exhibit superior property combinations. In the present work, cellular automata is used to address the problem of dislocation behaviour and 4 factors: (i) a high density of dislocations, (ii) sub-nanometre intragranular solute clusters, (iii) 2 geometries of nanometre-scale intergranular solute structures and (iv) grain sizes tens of nanometres in diameter featuring in aluminium alloys containing a nanostructural hierarchy and exhibiting record strength with good ductility—an aerospace grade 7075 alloy exhibits a yield strength of 1 GPa and total elongation to failure of 9 %. We show that the clusters and geometries of nanometre-scale intergranular solute structures govern the strength of such material, resulting in their increasing elongation. Our results demonstrate that this simulation explains the phenomena of the super-strong materials of new generation with entirely new regimes of property-performance space.