from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
Magnesium-lithium alloy is one of the lightest metal construction material and has excellent strength and with low density. Its density is about 1.3-1.6 g/cm3 and has high strength, and is an ideal structure material for aerospace, aeronautics and military industry, nuclear industry, electronic products, etc. The primary feature of Mg-Li alloys is high solid solubility of lithium in magnesium and magnesium in lithium. There are also no intermetallic phases. In the equilibrium system, there are two solid phases: a solid solution of lithium in magnesium with a hexagonal structure and a solid solution of magnesium in the lithium, characterised by a structure of a regular spatially centred. To improve mechanical properties of magnesium-lithium alloys, a different type of modifiers are added to melts to decrease grain size thus changing mechanical properties. Zirconium is one of the magnesium alloy microstructure modifier, which reduces the grain size and consequently makes it possible to obtain satisfying mechanical properties. Even a small amount of zirconium in magnesium alloys results in a complete modification of coarse-grained microstructure. The paper presents the results of the influence of commercial Zr on the refine the grain size and dilatometric behaviour of Mg-Lix-1.5Al alloys (x = 4.5, 9 and 12 by weight percentage). The coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of investigated light-weight alloys was measured in the temperature range from 20 to 400 C. The effects of Zr content on the microstructure of analysed magnesium alloys were investigated. Microstructural evaluations were identified by light microscope.
Keywords: Magnesium-lithium alloys, microstructure, grain refinement, thermal expansion© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.