Evaluation of Cooling Rate Effects on the Mechanical Properties of Die Cast Magnesium Alloy AM60

With the increased application of magnesium high-pressure die castings (HPDC), it is necessary to better understand process-structure-mechanical properties. In the case of HPDC, ductility and yield strength strongly depend on porosity, grain size, and the skin thickness. In this contribution, a new method is developed which employs knowledge of local cooling rates to predict the grain size and the skin thickness of HPDC magnesium components. The centreline cooling curve, together with the die temperature, and the thermodynamic properties of the alloy are then used as inputs to compute the solution to the Stefan problem of a moving phase boundary, thereby providing the through-thickness cooling curves at each chosen location of the casting. The local cooling rate is used to calculate the resulting grain size and skin thickness via established relationships. The prediction of skin thickness and average grain size of skin region determined from this method compares quite well with the experimental results. Due to the presence of externally solidified grains, this method underestimates the grain size value in the core region, as compared to the experiment. Finally, we predict the locally varying yield strength using a modified Hall-Petch equation.