Development of wrought Mg-Li based alloys with improved strength and ductility

Abstract

A comprehensive investigation has been undertaken to develop cold rolled Mg-Li based alloys with tensile properties superior to the existing commercial or experimental Mg-Li based alloys. In this endeavor, melting and casting of these alloys proved to be very challenging. In the present work, the challenges encountered in melting and casting of these alloys and efforts to successfully overcome them to produce good quality castings, which could be easily cold rolled to achieve tensile properties hitherto not achieved for Mg-Li based alloys are discussed. Overall, it can be said that the squeeze cast LZ82 alloy exhibited superior tensile properties compared to LZ81 alloy for all the processing routes investigated in the present work. The best tensile properties were obtained for 85% cold rolled LZ82 alloy, i.e., 219 MPa 0.2% proof stress, 262 MPa ultimate tensile strength and 64% elongation to failure, which are superior to any commercial or experimental Mg-Li based alloy