Development of Empirical Model to Study the Effect of Precipitate and Ligament Size on the Hardness of Mg-4Al-Nd Alloy

Abstract

In this work an empirical model has been developed to study the effect of microstructural changes on the hardness of Mg-4Al-xNd (x = 0, 1, 4) alloy. The microstructural changes were obtained by varying Nd content in the alloy. The result reveals that when 1 wt% Nd is added, the formation of Mg17Al12 (? phase) is repressed. It gets replaced by another intermetallic Al2Nd. Further increase in wt% of Nd to 4%, leads to formation of two intermetallics in the alloy. Inter particle distance (ligament size) of the different intermetallic phases (Al2Nd and Al11Nd3) was estimated and co-relation between hardness of the alloy and ligament size was established. The model shows that hardness of the material is directly proportional to the ligament size. � 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.