Grain Refinement of Mg-Al Alloys by a New Al-4.1V-1.7B Refiner Containing Sole VB2 Particles

• Published in: Journal of materials engineering and performance Vol. 32; no. 2; pp. 761 - 772
• Main Authors: Fan, Wenxue, Bai, Yu, Li, Jiaheng, Li, Guangyang, Hao, Hai
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.01.2023
• Subjects: Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Chemistry and Materials Science; Corrosion and Coatings; Engineering Design; Materials Science; Quality Control; Reliability; Safety and Risk; Technical Article; Tribology; grain refinement; edge-to-edge models; VB; particles; heterogeneous nucleation; mechanical properties
• ISSN: 1059-9495; 1544-1024
• DOI: 10.1007/s11665-022-07110-x

Grain refinement is a promising way to improve strength and ductility simultaneously in a given metallic material. In this study, a new grain refiner Al-4.1V-1.7B containing sole VB 2 particles is prepared by the liquid solidification reaction method. The grain refiner is added to the Mg-Al alloy to evaluate the refining ability. The results indicate that the Al-4.1V-1.7B grain refiner exhibits a remarkable refinement effect on Mg-Al alloys. High-resolution transmission electron microscope (HRTEM) examination and edge-to-edge models (E2EM) were utilized to explore the refining mechanism. The results revealed that there are well-defined crystallographic orientation relationships between VB 2 and α -Mg matrix: [1 2 ¯ 1 0] VB2 /[1 2 ¯ 1 0] α -Mg in (10 1 ¯ 0 ) VB2 /(0002) α -Mg , which indicated the VB 2 particles can play the role of nucleation sites for α -Mg during solidification, resulting in a good grain refining effect. The ultimate tensile strength (UTS), yield strength (YS) and elongation (EL) of AZ31 alloy were significantly increased from 153 MPa, 68 MPa and 9.6% to 207 MPa, 89 MPa and 16.7%, respectively, with 1.0 wt.% Al-4.1V-1.7B grain refiner addition.