New developments of wrought Magnesium semi-finished products are mainly aimed for applications within the transportation (automotive, rail and aerospace) and electronic industry. There are noticeable advances in the understanding of the deformation behavior of Mg alloys. However, wrought magnesium alloys are still playing a minor role in the industry. This is mainly due to the lack of formability along with poor galvanic corrosion resistance, e.g. conventional alloys AZ31 and AM50. Specifically with respect to its formability, several works have shown that the room temperature formability of Mg alloys can be significantly improved by appropriate selection of alloying elements and processing routes. For instance, Mg-Zn-rare earth (RE) and Mg-Zn-Ca alloys can compete or even exceed, considering the specific strength, the formability and mechanical properties of some structural Al alloys. From that perspective, the need to further optimize the mechanical properties and forming capabilities of novel Mg alloys is of high scientific and industrial interest.

In this context, this presentation will report the recent developments in the thermomechanical processing for improving the formability of Mg alloy sheets. Special emphasis is given to technologies that have potential to be implemented at industrial scale. Furthermore, our current developments of sheet processing via extensive shear by means of severe plastic deformation via equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) will be presented. The potential utilization of shear deformation during thermomechanical processing for tailoring the crystallographic texture of Mg alloys will be discussed. For instance, the attenuation of the inherent anisotropic deformation behavior of Mg alloys. In addition to this, holistic aspects on the development / production of formable lightweight systems based on formable magnesium alloys protected via powder coating technology will be introduced. Thus tackling the poor formability, its anisotropic behavior as well as improving the corrosion resistance of novel Mg alloys.