Thermal stability of Al-Mg-Sc-Zr alloy
(Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016，China)
Abstract: The thermal stability of Al3(Sc,Zr) precipitates in the cold worked Al-Mg-Sc-Zr alloy after elevated temperature exposure was investigated. The evaluation was conducted using room temperature tensile, Vicker’s hardness, optical metallography and scanning electron microscope (SEM) with the backscatter. The results show that the Al3(Sc,Zr) precipitates and mechanical properties have no obvious change, and the grains keep elongated along the working direction as that in cold worked sample after exposure at 300 ℃ for 1 000 h. The coarsening of Al3(Sc,Zr) precipitates occurs and is no longer effective on the recrystallization resistance, and partial recrystallization is observed after 400 ℃ exposure. In particular, after 500 ℃ exposure, the hardness decreases drastically and the alloy has fully recrystallized due to the obvious coarsening of Al3(Sc,Zr) precipitates.
Key words: Al-Mg-Sc-Zr alloy; thermal stability; Al3(Sc,Zr); recrystallization