ARC Centre of Excellence for Design in Light Metals

The Centre of Excellence for Design in Light Metals (CoE) and the CAST CRC are joint collaborators with CSIRO Light Metals Flagship, through the CSIRO Flagship Collaboration Program. This initiative is known as the Australian Partnership in Light Metals Research, and the activities have been divided into two themes:

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Design, Forming and Surface Protection of Lightweight Automotive Components

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Cost Effective Titanium Products from Powder Precursors

These link directly with two of the Light Metals Flagship Themes, namely Aluminium/Magnesium Manufacturing and Titanium. The collaboration was funded for a period of three years from July 2006, and started with four scoping projects which were to identify prospective research opportunities. Three projects were identified immediately for further work (beginning in 2007), and a fourth was subsequently initiated in late 2008.

Of the three projects signed off in 2007, two have been, or are close to being, completed and the third has been granted an extension of time and will be completed by the end of 2010. The fourth project, looking at grain refinement in magnesium, commenced in late 2008 and will also be completed by the end of 2010.

Coating for Magnesium Wheels

The processing conditions to ensure a consistent base coat have been optimized, and the applicability to a range of alloy compositions has been demonstrated. This project is being carried out by CAST CRC at The University of Queensland.

Thermohydrogen Processing of Titanium Powder

This projected was completed in early 2010, and at this stage there are no plans to continue the work in this area.

Low Cost Titanium Alloys for Powder Processing

This project has been completed. There were two parts to this project: A low cost sheet material and a ductile titanium aluminide composition. In the sheet area, an alloy composition has been identified which satisfies the low cost criterion and has properties intermediate between those of CP-Ti(II) and Ti-6Al-4V. A further project is being considered to characterise the behaviour of this alloy more extensively. The titanium aluminide work has shown that there are regions of the phase diagram where enhanced ductility is possible. Before an appropriate composition and microstructure can be identified, there is a need to fully understand the deformation behaviour, and it is considered that this is best carried out within a PhD project.

Grain Refinement in Magnesium Alloys

The work is concentrating on the magnesium alloys containing aluminium, for which there is no commercial grain refining agent. The initial work has concentrated on quantifiying the effect of grain size on mechanical properties in alloys AZ91E and AM60, where the grain refinement has been achieved by a combination of process condition adjustments and control of melt purity. Novel potential grain refining compounds are to be identified using software developed at The University of Queensland. The program uses the crystallographic matching between a particular pair of designated metal/metal or metal/intermetallic compounds to assess grain refining ability. Several compounds have been identified and are currently being evaluated.

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