Effects of pouring temperature and cylinder temperature on microstructures and mechanical properties of rheomoulding AZ91D alloy

Abstract An advanced rheomoulder, which is a device in the integration of melting metal, storage, slurry preparation, transportation and injection forming, was introduced and used to manufacture rheomoulding AZ91D alloy. Effects of pouring temperature and cylinder temperature on microstructures and mechanical properties of rheomoulding AZ91D alloy were investigated. The results show that the process can obtain such rheomoulding AZ91D in which primary α-Mg particles are fine, spherical and uniformly distributed in the matrix. With the decrease of pouring temperature, the morphology of primary α-Mg particles changes from coarse rosette-like to fine spherical shape gradually. As the cylinder temperature decreases, the average size of primary α-Mg particles decreases firstly and then substantially maintains stable while the sphericity and solid fraction increase continuously. Also, decreasing pouring temperature or cylinder temperature properly contributes to improving mechanical properties of rheomoulding AZ91D for the refinement of α-Mg particles and the decrease of porosity fraction. Furthermore, rheomoulding AZ91D performs much better than thixomoulding, rheo-diecasting and high pressure die-casting (HPDC) in terms of mechanical properties. Compared with HPDC, the tensile strength, yield strength and elongation are increased by 27.8%, 15.7% and 121%, respectively.