Effects of heat treatment on microstructure and mechanical properties of squeeze casting AlSi9Mg alloy flywheel housings formed with local supplementary pressure

Abstract

Targeted squeeze casting components of the thick-walled locations with local supplementary pressure (LSP) can effectively realize the local forced shrinkage, which is very significant for the elimination of shrinkage defects. In this paper, the effects of solid solution temperature, solid solution time, aging temperature and aging time on AlSi9Mg aluminum alloy flywheel housing with large wall thickness difference and complex structure formed with LSP were investigated. The results showed that the LSP effectively refined the microstructure and accelerated the spheroidization process of eutectic silicon, which reduced the heat treatment holding time significantly. The twinning growth of silicon particles effectively hindered the dislocation motion, relieved the stress concentration, and improved the strength. The fishbone-like AlSiMnFe phase were passivated after heat treatment. Heat treatment can enhance the plasticity by breaking and spheroidizing the coarse needle-like eutectic silicon, and enhance the strength by refining and homogenizing the β'' phase precipitated in the alloy. The optimum heat treatment parameters are solid solution at 540 °C for 210 min and aging at 175 °C for 480 min. Under the optimum heat treatment condition, the ultimate tensile strength, yield strength and elongation for the position with LSP reached 306.1 MPa, 237.5 MPa, 13.29 %.

Keywords

• Heat treatment
• Local supplementary pressure
• Microstructure
• Mechanical properties