Abstract
Developing high strength and high ductility magnesium alloys is an important issue for weight-reduction applications. In this work, we explored the feasibility of manipulating nanosized precipitates on LPSO-contained (long period stacking ordered phase) ultra-fine grained (UFG) magnesium alloy to obtain simultaneously improved strength and ductility. The effect of two aging treatments on microstructures and mechanical properties of an UFG Mg-10Y-6Gd-1.5Zn-0.5Zr alloy was systematically investigated and compared by a series of microstructure characterization techniques and tensile test. The results showed that nano γ’’ precipitates were successfully introduced in T5 peak aged alloy with no obvious increase in grain size. While T6 peak aging treatment stimulated the growth of α-Mg grains to 4.3 μm (fine grained, FG), together with the precipitation of γ’’ precipitates. Tensile tests revealed that both aging treatments remarkably improved the strengths but impaired the ductility slightly. The T5 peak aged alloy exhibited the optimum mechanical properties with ultimate strength of 431 MPa and elongation of 13.5%. This work provided a novel strategy to simultaneously improve the strength and ductility of magnesium alloys by integrating the intense precipitation strengthening with ductile LPSO-contained UFG/FG microstructure.
Highlights
Magnesium alloys exhibit great application potential in aerospace, military, transportation and medical equipment industries due to their low density, rich resource and excellent mechanical properties [1]
The novel long period stacking ordered (LPSO) phase, which was observed in certain Mg-RE-Zn alloys, exhibited intense strengthening effect
The WGZ1061 cast alloy was directly subjected to a rotary-die equal channel angular pressing (RD-ECAP) after cutting into cuboid samples with dimension of 20 mm × 20 mm × 45 mm
Summary
Magnesium alloys exhibit great application potential in aerospace, military, transportation and medical equipment industries due to their low density, rich resource and excellent mechanical properties [1]. The relatively lower absolute strength and poorer formability of magnesium alloys than that of aluminum alloys restrict their further applications [2,3]. Among various magnesium alloy series, Mg-RE (Rare earth elements) based alloys always exhibited high-strength as a result of the combination of solid solution strengthening, precipitation strengthening and second phase strengthening [9,10]. The Mg-RE based second phases usually show high hardness and high melting point, bearing an important strengthening effect in such magnesium. The novel long period stacking ordered (LPSO) phase, which was observed in certain Mg-RE-Zn alloys, exhibited intense strengthening effect
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