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Grain refinement of Mg-10Gd alloy by Al additions

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Abstract

The addition of Al to a Mg-10Gd alloy was found to lead to substantial grain size reduction during casting at concentrations between 0.8% and 1.3%. At these concentrations, Al2Gd particles were found at the center of grains, and the orientation relationship [112]Al2Gd ⋎[2110]α_Mg, (110)Al2Gd| (0110)α_Mg was found reproducibly between Al2Gd and δ-Mg, indicating that these are the heterogeneous nucleant particles that form in situ at these Al contents. Most of these nuclei were between 2 and 7 urn in size. Furthermore, little grain coarsening was observed during solution treatment, particularly compared with an alloy grain refined by Zr particles where substantial coarsening occurred. This appears to be because Al2Gd particles restrict grain boundary motion during solution treatment.

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Acknowledgments

The work is sponsored by National natural science foundation of China (No. 51275295), CAST Cooperative Research Centre of Australia, and Technological innovation projects of Shanghai aerospace advanced technology Joint Research Centre (No. USCAST2012-1-15). The authors acknowledge Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy (MCEM) for access to experimental facilities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, National Engineering Research Center of Light Alloy Net Forming, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Jichun Dai & Wenjiang Ding

  2. Department of Materials Engineering, CAST Cooperative Research Centre, Monash University, Victoria, 3800, Australia

    Mark Easton & Suming Zhu

  3. State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Guohua Wu

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  1. Jichun Dai
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  2. Mark Easton
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  3. Suming Zhu
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  4. Guohua Wu
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  5. Wenjiang Ding
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Correspondence to Guohua Wu.

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Dai, J., Easton, M., Zhu, S. et al. Grain refinement of Mg-10Gd alloy by Al additions. Journal of Materials Research 27, 2790–2797 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2012.313

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2012.313

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