Hydrostatic extrusion of commercial magnesium alloys at 100 °C and its influence on grain refinement and mechanical properties

Magnesium wrought alloys are of special interest for structural parts due to the possibility to obtain improved and more homogenous microstructures and mechanical properties compared to cast components. The market of magnesium wrought alloys is still relatively small and they are only used for special applications because of high cost of the feedstock. Currently, with decreasing prices of primary magnesium extrusion of magnesium becomes competitive to that of aluminium and is important for upcoming research and development activities.In this study hydrostatic extrusion, as a quite rarely applied technique, is used for deformation of commercial magnesium alloys at 100 °C which is significantly below the temperature necessary for activation of new gliding systems. All experiments were carried out using common industrial extrusion parameters like extrusion rate and extrusion ratio but with the objective to obtain extremely fine grained materials as received typically from ECAE processing. These experiments show that the processing of magnesium alloys is possible even at temperature at 100 °C. Limitations of this processing and the influence of process parameters on the microstructure and mechanical properties of extruded profiles will be discussed.