Deformation behaviour of a new Magnesium ternary alloy

Abstract

Magnesium based alloys are yet to fill a greater niche especially in the automotive and aeronautical industry. In fact, such alloys have a big weight saving potential, together with good damping characteristics. However, nowadays about 90% of Magnesium products are produced by casting, mainly using two alloy systems, namely Mg-Al-Zn (AZ91D) and Mg-Al (AM50, AM60). Now the emphasis, especially after having achieved considerable success in creep resistance and understanding of the deformation behaviour of Magnesium, has been shifted towards wrought alloys; AZ31, in this case, is the most popular. In this work a multi-element Magnesium alloy, developed to improve the deformation capacity of such a lightweight material, has been investigated and compared to a commercial AZ31B. The possibility of adopting such a multi-element Magnesium alloy for manufacturing components via unconventional sheet forming (such as superplastic forming, warm hydroforming, incremental forming) has been proved in the present work focusing the attention on the superplastic field. Free inflation tests were thus conducted at 450 degrees C setting constant pressure to investigate the superplastic behaviour (in terms of dome height and strain rate sensitivity index) of both the multi-element Magnesium alloy (Mg-2Zn-Ce) and the commercial one (AZ31B). To enhance information on the thickness distribution and investigate the microstructure evolution, metallographic analyses on the samples used to carry out free inflation tests were also performed. The developed ternary alloy manifested quite a good deformation behaviour (high strain rate sensitivity index), even being tested in the as cast condition; in addition a limited grain coarsening was observed in the specimens after deformation.