The Effect of Rare Earth Elements on the Texture and Formability of Shear Rolled Magnesium Sheet

Abstract

The lower relative formability of magnesium alloy sheet can be a restrictive factor when designing light weight engineering structures. Standard symmetric rolling introduces a strong basal texture that decreases the formability; however, asymmetric rolling has been put forward as a possible route to produce sheet with weaker basal texture and greater ductility. It has also been shown in recent work that weaker textures can be produced through the addition of rare earth elements to magnesium alloys. Therefore, this study has been carried out to investigate the effect of rare earth additions on the texture changes during asymmetric rolling. Two alloys have been studied (AZ31B and ZEK100), in which a significant difference is the presence of rare earths in the ZEK100 but not in AZ31B. The differences in texture, microstructure and mechanical properties will be discussed.