Abstract
The effects of adding Yb and Zr elements on the microstructure and mechanical properties of Al7Si0.3Mg alloy and the mechanism of refinement and modification were investigated. The results show that the addition of Yb and Zr elements can significantly refine the α-Al matrix, transforming it from coarse dendritic crystals to fine petal-like crystals with a significant reduction in grain size, and the eutectic silicon metamorphoses from coarse needle-like to short rod-like. The modification mechanism of eutectic silicon is that the adsorption of Yb and Zr at the twin grooves (TPRE) changes the eutectic silicon growth mode and finally changes the eutectic silicon morphology. After heat treatment (T6), a large number of Al3(Yb, Zr) particles are precipitated to strengthen and refine the grain, and the addition of Yb and Zr can significantly improve the mechanical properties of the alloy. The tensile strength and elongation of the alloy (T6) are 296.3 MPa and 9.2% when the Yb content is 0.3wt% and the Zr content is 0.25wt%, which are 17% and 1.1 times higher than those of the unrefined and unmodified alloy, respectively.
Science Press
Aluminum-silicon casting alloys are very versatile, and eutectic alloys containing silicon are the most fluid alloys of the casting aluminum alloys which can improve strength and wear resistance. This alloy has low density, low casting shrinkage rate, excellent weldability and corrosion resistance, and adequate mechanical propertie
In the past decades, the mechanical strength of alloys has been improved by adjusting their chemical compositio
It has been shown that addition of appropriate amounts of rare earth elements and transition metal elements has significant strengthening effects and improves their mechanical properties, mainly due to the formation of additional precipitates in the intra-dendrite regio
Rare earth Yb has similar chemical properties with Sc or Er, Al-Zr-Yb alloy also precipitates L12 structure Al3(Zr, Yb) precipitation phase during aging proces
In this experiment, the chemical composition of A356 alloy is presented in
The above-mentioned casting bar was cut from 20 mm to the bottom and used to prepare a sample of Φ15mm. The metallographic samples were ground with 400#~2000# sand-paper, then polished with 0.5 micron polishing paste, and etched with 0.5% HF solution and rinsed with alcohol, while the deep etching process was polishing and then etching with 36% hydrochloric acid solution for 20~25 s followed by rinsing with alcohol. The microstructure was characterized by optical microscope, scanning electron microscope, energy spectrometer and transmission electron microscope. The average grain size and eutectic width-to-diameter ratio of the samples were counted using Image Pro Plus software. The heat treatment process was solid solution at 545 °C for 4 h+aging at 170 °C for 6 h. The mechanical properties were tested by processing each cast test bar into a standard tensile specimen with a specification length of 100 mm, and then tested on an electronic universal testing machine at a tensile rate of 1.00 mm/min.

Fig.1 As-cast microstructures of A356 alloy with different contents of Yb: (a) 0.0wt%, (b) 0.1wt%, (c) 0.3wt%, and (d) 0.5wt%
In order to avoid the formation of excessive Yb-rich intermetallic compounds, the alloy with 0.3wt% Yb addition was used to study the effect of different Zr contents on the alloy morphology, as shown in

Fig.2 As-cast microstructure of A356-0.3Yb alloy with different contents of Zr: (a) 0.15wt%, (b) 0.25wt%, (c) 0.35wt%, and (d) 0.45wt%
2.1.3 Effect of addition of Yb and Zr on the average grain size and the aspect ratio of eutectic silicon of the alloy
In order to investigate the effect of Yb and Zr composite refinement and modification,

Fig.3 Microstructures of alloys after deep corrosion: (a, b) A356, (c, d) A356-0.3Yb, and (e, f) A356-0.3Yb-0.25Zr
Image Pro Plus software was used to calculate the average grain size and eutectic silicon aspect ratio of all samples; 20 groups were counted for each sample and averaged. The average grain size adopted the cut-line method, that is, the grains were intercepted by a straight line with a certain length. It is possible to calculate how long the average straight line can cut a grain, which is the average grain size. The aspect ratio of eutectic silicon is the ratio of its length to its width. And the results are shown in

Fig.4 Effect of Yb and Zr content on average grain size of alloy

Fig.5 Influence of Yb and Zr content on aspect ratio of eutectic Si
SEM images of the morphology and distribution of intermetallic compounds in A356, A356-0.3Yb and A356-0.3Yb-0.25Zr alloys are shown in

Fig.6 SEM images of alloys with different refinement and modification treatments: (a) A356, (b) A356-0.3Yb, and (c) A356-0.3Yb-0.25Zr
To further explore the alloy fracture mechanism, the fracture morphology of the studied alloy was studied, as shown in

Fig.7 Tensile fracture morphologies of alloys with different refinement and modification treatments (T6): (a) A356, (b) A356-0.1Yb, (c) A356-0.3Yb, (d) A356-0.5Yb, (e) A356-0.3Yb-0.15Zr, (f) A356-0.3Yb-0.25Zr, (g) A356-0.3Yb-0.35Zr, and (h) A356-0.3Yb-0.45Zr
In order to determine the refinement and modification mechanism of Yb and Zr in the alloy, the A356-0.3Yb-0.25Zr alloy was firstly subjected to a local surface scan to analyze the distribution of the elements in the alloy, and the results are shown in

Fig.8 SEM image (a) and EDS element mappings of Al (b), Si (c), Zr (d) and Yb (e) for A356-0.3Yb-0.25Zr
According to the above experiments, the strengthening mechanism of A356 alloy by Yb and Zr composite addition was investigated, and the results show that the main strengthening mechanisms are fine grain strengthening, modified eutectic silicon strengthening and precipitation strengthening.
According to a large number of experiments and the strengthening mechanism, the mechanical strength and grain size of metallic materials satisfy the Hall-Petch equation:
(1) |
where σ represents the yield limit of the material, σ0 indicates the lattice frictional resistance when moving a single dislocation, k is a constant related to the material and the grain size, and d is the average grain size. It can be seen that the finer the grain size, the higher the mechanical strength. Therefore, the grain size of the alloy with composite addition of Yb and Zr is reduced to 133 µm and its mechanical proper-ties reach the highest value compared to those of the alloy.
Modified eutectic silicon changes its growth mode and thus its morphology changes, which is beneficial to the strengthening of the alloy. In order to further study this strengthening mechanism, the results of TEM analysis are shown in

Fig.9 Bright-field TEM images of silicon phase taken in A356 (a) and A356-0.3Yb-0.25Zr (b) alloys; SAED patterns of eutectic silicon in A356-0.3Yb-0.25Zr alloys along [01]Si (c) and [10]Si (d)
The precipitation strengthening can be explained by the Orowan mechanism, and the intensity change (Δσo) relationship is given by:
(2) |
where M is Taylor's average orientation factor (3.06), G is the shear modulus of the aluminum matrix at 24 °C (25.4 GPa), and b is the Burgers vector length of aluminum (0.286 nm), ν is Poisson's ratio of aluminum (0.345), is the average radius of the precipitation phase particles, λ is the spacing between particles in the precipitation phase. It is shown that the smaller the particle radius of the precipitated phase and the smaller the spacing between the particles, the higher the strength of the alloy. With the composite addition of Yb and Zr, not only the precipitation of Mg2Si (β") phase but also the nano-precipitation phase of Al3(Yb, Zr) with LI2 structure appear during the aging process, as shown in

Fig.10 TEM image of precipitates in A356-0.3Yb-0.25Zr alloy after heat treatment (T6)
1) The addition of Yb element can significantly refine the dendritic α-Al matrix and improve the morphology of eutectic silicon, reducing the aspect ratio of eutectic silicon and changing it from coarse needle-like to fibrous and short rod-like. With the addition of Zr, the α-Al matrix is further refined and transformed from dendritic to petal-like crystals, and the modified refinement effect is most obvious for 0.3wt% Yb+0.25wt% Zr addition.
2) The mechanism of Yb and Zr refinement is mainly the formation of second-phase particles Al3(Yb, Zr), which plays a dual role in nucleation and refinement during the solidifi-cation of aluminum, i.e. increasing the nucleation rate and playing a role in precipitation strengthening and thus refine-ment of grains. The mechanism of eutectic modification is the adsorption of Yb and Zr in the twin grooves (TPRE), thus changing the eutectic growth pattern and resulting in changes in the eutectic morphology.
3) The addition of Yb and Zr can significantly improve the mechanical properties of the alloy. When the Yb content is 0.3wt% and the Zr content is 0.25wt%, the tensile strength, yield strength and elongation of the alloy (T6) are 296.3 MPa, 214.7 MPa and 9.2%, respectively, which are 17%, 21.7% and 1.1 times higher than those of the unrefined and unmodified alloy.
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