Title: Strengthening aluminium alloys under as-cast condition for high pressure die casting

Abstract

Lightweight materials and structural manufacturing require castings to have high strength and thin wall structure. Therefore, the strength increase of high pressure die castings is critical for industrial applications. However, most of the high pressure die cast parts are not suitable for further strengthening by solution and ageing heat treatment due to blistering. Although the recently developed vacuum-assisted high pressure die cast is a way to produce heat treatable die-castings, extra time and energy costs are associated in the production. Therefore, most of the high pressure die cast parts are preferred to be applied under as-cast condition. Starting from the review of strengthening mechanisms, the present paper aims to introduce the recent development of new aluminium alloys for improving the as-cast strength with high pressure die casting. The as-cast alloys with different approaches can offer the yield strength greater than 220 MPa and the tensile strength greater than 390 MPa, as well as the industrially acceptable elongation greater than 4%, showing the great potential in industrial applications because of the equivalent cost in comparison with the existing popular alloys. On top of the study in composition optimization and strengthening mechanisms, the industrial trials with real engineering components will be introduced to verify the improvement of new development.

Biography

Shouxun Ji is a research team for lightweight alloys and structures at Brunel University London. He has 23 registered patents in WO, EU, UK, and CN on aluminium alloys, magnesium alloys, casting processes including semi-solid process, high pressure die casting, low pressure die casting, centrifugal casting, sand casting and metallurgical equipment. He is the PI and CoIof more than 20 projects from EPSRC, Innovate UK, APC and UK&EU industries. He is a technical committee member in several organizations, including NFE035 Light Metals and their Alloys, BSI international, UK; ISO/TC 079/SC07 ‘Aluminium and cast aluminium alloys’; ISO/TC 079/SC06 ‘Wrought aluminium and aluminium alloys’; ISO/TC 079/SC05 ‘Magnesium and alloys of cast or wrought magnesium’.