(1. Northwest Institute for Non-ferrous Metal Research, Xi’an 710016, China) (2. Western Energy Material Technologies Co.，Ltd., Xi’an 710299, China) (3. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Xi’an University of Science and Technology, Xi’an 710054, China) (4. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China)
Lightweighting of vehicles is an important response to the energy and environmental crises, and building vehicles by adopting aluminum alloys with high specific strength is an effective way to meet this objective. At present, low-strength 5000（Al-Mg）and 6000（Al-Mg-Si）series aluminum alloys have been successfully applied to automotive bodies. High-strength 7000 (Al-Zn-Mg-Cu) series aluminum alloys, as an ideal candidate to replace steel structural parts, cannot be widely used in automobile industry due to their poor formability. The formability of 7000 series aluminum alloy has attracted more and more attention. Thus, for vehicle lightweighting, it is of great significance to systematically study the forming technologies suitable for 7000 series aluminum alloy and promote their application in vehicle structural parts. Recently, researchers have carried out a series of attempts and studies on the formability of 7000 series aiuminum alloys and have yielded some positive results. This article presents an overview of the research progress on cold forming, warm forming and hot forming (especially hot form quench technique) of 7000 series aluminum alloys. The influence of forming processes on the formability of alloys, as well as microstructures and mechanical properties of final parts, was introduced in detail. The advantages/disadvantages and future application of different forming processes were also analyzed. Lastly, the development of forming technologies for 7000 series aluminum alloys was forecasted.