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Effect of Cooling Rate on the Grain Refinement of Mg–3Nd Alloys by Aluminum

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Abstract

The effect of cooling rate on the grain refinement of Mg–3Nd alloys refined by Al was investigated in this work. The experimental results show that the grain size of Mg–Nd alloys can be refined by increasing the cooling rate and the Al addition. When the content of Al is more than 2%, Al2Nd particles can be observed inside the grains, which can be act as an effective nucleating site. The orientation relationship between Al2Nd particles and α-Mg matrix is determined as \( [101]_{{{\text{Al}}_{2} {\text{Nd}}}} \parallel [\bar{1}100]_{\text{Mg}} \), \( (\bar{2}22)_{{{\text{Al}}_{2} {\text{Nd}}}} \parallel (0002)_{\text{Mg}} \) and \( [\bar{1}11]_{{{\text{Al}}_{2} {\text{Nd}}}} \parallel [0001]_{\text{Mg}} \), \( (02\bar{2})_{{{\text{Al}}_{2} {\text{Nd}}}} \parallel (01\bar{1}0)_{\text{Mg}} \) by TEM analysis. The refining effect is affected by the size and the number density of Al2Nd particle. The minimum nucleating size of observed Al2Nd particle in Mg–3Nd–2Al and Mg–3Nd–3Al alloys decreases with increasing the cooling rate, which are 1.5 and 1 μm, when the cooling rate is 1.2 and 3.5 °C/s, respectively. The number density of Al2Nd particle in Mg–3Nd–2Al alloy increases with increasing the cooling rate from 0.3 to 1.2 °C/s and decreases with further increasing the cooling rate to 3.5 °C/s. And the number density of Al2Nd particle in Mg–3Nd–3Al alloy increases with increasing the cooling rate.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Heilongjiang Province Natural Science Foundation (No. ZD2016011) and Harbin Science and Technology Innovation Talent Funding Project (No. 2016RAQXJ014).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin University of Science and Technology, Harbin, China

    Lei Wang, Yicheng Feng, Erjun Guo, Yanhong Chen & Liping Wang

  2. Construction Engineering Department, East College of Heilongjiang, Harbin, China

    Yang Yang

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  1. Lei Wang
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Correspondence to Yicheng Feng.

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Wang, L., Feng, Y., Guo, E. et al. Effect of Cooling Rate on the Grain Refinement of Mg–3Nd Alloys by Aluminum. Inter Metalcast 12, 906–918 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40962-018-0224-5

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