The study of microstructure and mechanical properties of twin-roll cast AZ31 magnesium alloy after constrained groove pressing

Abstract

Microstructure investigation and microhardness mapping were done on the material with ultra-fine grained structure prepared by constrained groove pressing of twin-roll cast AZ31 magnesium strips. The microstructure observations showed significant drop of the grain size from 200 gm to 20 gm after constrained groove pressing. Moreover, the heterogeneities in the microhardness along the cross-section observed in the as-cast strip were replaced by the bands of different microhardness in the constrained groove pressed material. It is shown that the constrained groove pressing technique is a good tool for the grain refinement of magnesium alloys. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.