Precipitation hardening effects on extension twinning in magnesium alloys

Precipitation Hardening of Metal Alloys

Precipitation hardening, or age hardening, provides one of the most widely used mechanisms for the strengthening of metal alloys. The fundamental understanding and basis for this technique was established in early work at the U. S. Bureau of Standards on an alloy known as Duralumin [1,2]. Duralumin is an aluminum alloy containing copper and magnesium with small amounts of iron and silicon. In a...

Three-dimensional effects of twinning in magnesium alloys

This article provides experimental evidence on the pronounced three-dimensional surface effects caused by tension twinning at early stages of plasticity of a magnesium alloy. To achieve this goal, multiscale mechanical testing was combined with strain field, texture and surface morphology quantification. The current investigation correlates crystallography-driven, grain-scale surface roughening...

Precipitation hardening in dilute Al–Zr alloys

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of solute content (hipoperitectic Al–0.22 wt.%Zr and hiperperitectic Al–0.32 wt.%Zr) on the precipitation hardening and microstructural evolution of dilute Al–Zr alloys isothermally aged. The materials were conventionally cast in a muffle furnace, solidified in a water-cooled Cu mold and subsequently heat-treated at the temperature of 650 K (3...

Precipitation Hardening of Al–Si–Mg Alloys

Modelling of Precipitation Hardening in Casting Aluminium Alloys

Precipitation hardening, because it involves the hardening of the material over a prolonged time, is also called age hardening, or ageing. By the appropriate heat treatment of precipitation hardening, the strength or hardness of some heat-treatable aluminium alloys can be enhanced by the formation of nano-meter sized second-phase precipitated particles within the original phase matrix. The fine...