Effect of high-intensity ultrasonic treatment on microstructure, hardness and wear behaviour of the hypereutectic Mg-5Si alloy

Abstract

The effect of high-intensity ultrasonic treatment (HIUST) on microstructure, hardness and wear behavior in Mg-5wt.%Si hypereutectic alloy has been investigated. The results showed clearly that without HIUST, most of primary Mg2Si appeared as coarse dendritic morphology with average size of about 200 µm. With HIUST, the average size of primary Mg2Si decreased significantly to about 33 µm and their morphologies changed to polyhedral shape. The modification mechanism is mainly attributed conjugation of two mechanisms: cavitation-enhanced heterogeneous nucleation and cavitation-induced dendrite fragmentation. The alloy treated with HIUST has higher hardness and wear resistance than that untreated with HIUST. The wear mechanism of investigated alloys at low applied load (10 N) and low sliding speed (0.3 m/s) is a mild abrasive oxidative wear with little adhesion. However, the wear mechanism due to the applied high loads (30, 50 N) at low sliding speed (0.3 m/s) and/or to the applied high sliding speeds (0.6, 0.9 m/s) under low load (10 N), could be described as delamination mechanism. The microstructures of the specimens were analyzed by optical microscope (OM) (model OPTIKA M-790, Italy). Energy dispersion spectrum (EDS) affiliated to field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) (model Quanta FEG, The Netherlands) were performed to reveal the concentration of alloying elements in selected areas of the microstructure.