from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
Aluminium alloys are popular among automotive heat exchangers designers due to their high thermal conductivity, good corrosion resistance and excellent strength-to-weight ratio. Aluminium alloy EN AW-3003 and its modifications are commonly used in this field. This work investigates the importance that the grain refinement has in changing the microstructure of the enhanced EN AW-3003 alloy with content of Zr and Zn when producing the alloy by Twin-Roll Casting. The work compares the grain refining efficiency of the two most commonly used master alloys, Al–5 wt% Ti–1 wt% B (TiBAl) and Al–3 wt% Ti–0.15 wt% C (TiCAl), using cooling curves analysis, metallographic samples analysis and tensile tests. The results show higher nucleation effectiveness of Al–5 wt% Ti–1 wt% B master alloy when compared to its Al–3 wt% Ti–0.15 wt% C counterpart. In addition, the use of Al–5 wt% Ti–1 wt% B master alloy leads to final product with slightly higher mechanical properties and more uniform microstructure. However, the grain refinement of enhanced EN AW-3003 aluminium alloy is a more complex problem involving other aspects (technological, economic, etc.). This is an important point for future study.
Keywords: Grain refinement, fin stock foils, enhanced EN AW-3003, TRC© 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.