Precipitation Simulation of AZ91 Alloy

Precipitation simulation of AZ91 (Mg-9Al-1Zn; all compositions are in wt.% unless otherwise stated.) magnesium alloy is carried out in this work using the PanPrecipitation module of Pandat™ software. In addition to the software, the thermodynamic database, mobility database, and precipitation database for AZ91 were developed to perform the simulation. The simulated results, such as the number density and particle size of the γ-Mg17Al12 precipitate, showed good agreement with the experimental data. Moreover, the simulated results were then used as input for the prediction of yield strength and micro-hardness of AZ91 aged at different temperatures, which also agreed well with experimental results. To demonstrate the applicability of the databases developed for AZ91, simulations were also carried out for two compositions with lower and higher Zn content. The simulated hardness showed reasonable agreement with the published experimental data.