The hysteretic behavior of aluminum alloy is fundamental for studying the seismic behavior of aluminum alloy structures. A total of three different loading protocols, including cyclic ascending, cyclic alternating and cyclic tensile, with the maximum strain amplitude up to ±4%, were adopted for the 6082-T6 and 7020-T6. In order to avoid buckling, the small gauge specimen with length-to-diameter ratio of 1.5 was adopted. The comparison of monotonous tensile results between the small gauge specimen and standard specimen revealed that the error of the two specimens was very small, which indicated the feasibility of the adoption of the small gauge specimens. The stress-strain relationship and hysteretic behavior of aluminum alloy were also obtained by cyclic loading test. The obtained results show that the aluminum alloy has good hysteretic behavior and ductility, and the load protocol influences its skeleton curve to a certain extent.