A unified modeling approach and experimental validation to predict the mechanical properties in age hardened magnesium alloys

Abstract

Present work focuses on developing a mechanism based strengthening model to predict the mechanical properties of age hardened Mg binary alloys. The study attempts to unify several model parameters and successfully demonstrates the ability of the model to predict the hardness and effective stiffness properties of aged Mg based binary alloys. The model considers the contribution of several strengthening mechanisms to estimate the hardness of Mg–Al and Mg–Zn alloy systems that are precipitation hardened at different aging conditions. The proposed model uses input parameters that are obtained from a precipitation model proposed by Paliwal and Jung (2019). Vickers micro-hardness experiments are conducted on aged binary Mg–Al (6 wt% Al) and Mg–Zn (4.0 and 5.5 wt% Zn) alloys. Verification and validation of the proposed model is carried out by comparing: (a) the hardness measures from experiments with model predictions, (b) the effective stiffness measures obtained from experiments with model predictions based on mean-field approach (Mori–Tanaka method) and (c) the model predictions relative to those obtained from experimental and theoretical data for Mg binaries in literature.