Effects of Isothermal Heating Process and Rare Earth Elements Addition on the Mechanical Properties of Semi-Solid Formed Mg-5Zn Alloys

摘要

Two-step isothermal heating and conventional one-step heating processes were used to produce the semi-solid slurry of Mg-5%Zn-0.5%Zr alloys with and without 1%RE. It was found that the slurry with better semi-solid characteristics could be fabricated by the two-step heating compared to the conventional process. Only the small amount of RE addition to the Mg-5%Zn-0.5%Zr alloy was observed to reduce the solid particle size of slurry significantly and to improve the tensile strength at 150℃, probably owing to Mg-Zn-RE phase with a high thermal stability.