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BY-NC-ND 3.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter April 19, 2011

Development of Magnesium Powder Metallurgy AZ31 Alloy Using Commercially Available Powders

  • Paul Burke and Georges J. Kipouros EMAIL logo

Abstract

Magnesium and its alloys are attractive materials for use in automotive and aerospace applications because of their low density and good mechanical properties. However, difficulty in forming magnesium and the limited number of available commercial alloys limit their use. The present work reviews the efforts to improve the attractiveness of magnesium through non-traditional processing, and presents the results of producing AZ31 magnesium alloy via powder metallurgy P/M. P/M can be used to alleviate the formability problem through near-net-shape processing, and also allows unique chemical compositions that can lead to the development of new alloys with novel properties.

The feasibility of producing magnesium powder metallurgy products utilizing the industrially dominant process of mixed powder blending, uni-axial die compaction and controlled atmosphere sintering was investigated. An alloy composition based on the commercial Mg alloy AZ31 (3 mass % Al, 1 mass % Zn) was used to facilitate the comparison to similar wrought product. The optimal processing conditions (compaction pressure, sintering time and temperature) were found to maximize sintered density and mechanical properties.

Results show that sintering temperature is one of the major variables that has an appreciable effect on the final properties of the samples, and that the effects of compaction pressure and sintering time were insignificant. The material showed poor tensile properties, with a maximum tensile strength of 32 MPa due to lack of sufficient densification. The latter was related to the lack of liquid phase formed during sintering of Al/Zn magnesium alloys and the barrier to diffusion due to the presence of the stable magnesium surface layer.


Corresponding author: Georges J. Kipouros, Materials Engineering Program, Dalhousie University, 1360 Barrington Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3J 2X4

Received: 2010-05-23
Accepted: 2010-08-05
Published Online: 2011-04-19
Published in Print: 2011-April

Copyright © 2011 De Gruyter

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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