Alloy Design for Enhancing the Fracture Resistance of Heat Treated High Pressure Die-Castings

Abstract

Recently, heat treatment technologies have been developed by the CSIRO Light Metals Flagship in Australia that allow the 0.2% proof stress of conventional aluminum alloy high pressure diecastings (HPDC’s) to be more than doubled without encountering problems with blistering or dimensional instability [1,2]. A range of other properties may also be improved such as fatigue resistance, thermal conductivity and fracture resistance. However, the current commercial HPDC Al-Si-Cu alloys have not been developed to exploit heat treatment or to optimize these specific mechanical properties, and one potential limitation of heat treating HPDC’s is that fracture resistance may be reduced as strength is increased. The current paper presents the outcomes of a program aimed at developing highly castable, secondary Al-Si-Cu HPDC alloys which display significantly enhanced ductility and fracture resistance in both the as-cast and heat treated conditions. Kahn-type tear tests were conducted to compare the fracture resistance of the conventional A380 alloy with a selection of the newly developed compositions. A comparison has also been made with the current permanent mold cast aluminium alloys and it is shown that the new HPDC compositions typically display higher levels of both tensile properties and fracture resistance.