Effect of substituting ceriumrich mischmetal with lanthanum on high temperature properties of diec.pdfVIP

Materials Science and Engineering A 380 (2004) 93–99 Effect of substituting cerium-rich mischmetal with lanthanum on high temperature properties of die-cast Mg–Zn–Al–Ca–RE alloys Ifeanyi A. Anyanwu a , Yasuhiro Gokanb,1, Atsuya Suzukib , Shigeharu Kamado a,∗, Yo Kojima a , Suguru Takeda c , Taketoshi Ishida c a Department of Mechanical Engineering, Nagaoka University of Technology, 1603-1 Kamitomioka, Nagaoka, Niigata 940-2188, Japan b Graduate Student, Nagaoka University of Technology, Japan c Magnesium Products Manufacturing Division, Ahresty Corporation, 4060 Mibumachi Shimotsuga-gun, Tochigi 321-0215, Japan Received 17 September 2003; received in revised form 10 March 2004 Abstract Mg–Zn–Al–Ca–RE alloys have been found to be promising materials for substituting aluminum alloys used for automatic transmission case applications in the automobile industry. Particularly, Mg–0.5%Zn–6%Al–1%Ca–3%RE (ZAXE05613) alloy exhibits comparable creep resistance as ADC12 die-casting aluminum alloy that is currently used for automatic transmission case applications. Changing the rare earth (RE) content of the alloy from mischmetal to lanthanum gives a further improvement in the creep properties of the alloy. Lanthanum addition results in the crystallization of a large amount of acicular Al11RE (Al La ) compound along the grain boundaries as well as across the grain 3 11 3 boundaries and this effectively controls grain boundary sliding and dislocation motion in the vicinity of the grain boundaries. As a result, die-cast ZAXLa05613 alloy exhibits a higher creep resistance than that of ZAXE05613 alloy. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Magnesium alloys; Die-casting; Grain boundary compou