Melting purification process and refining effect of 5083 Al-Mg alloy

To improve the poor stability of casting process of Al alloy with high Mg content, which leads to poor final product quality, the melting purification process and the influences of the refiner on the microstructure and defect of 5083 alloy were studied. The results show that the optimized process for the rotary impeller degassing of 5083 alloy is as follows: a rotary speed of 250-400 r/min; a gas flow of 1.2-2.0 L/s, a refining time of 10-15 min. This optimized process can reduce the gas content in the solid alloy to 2×10−3 mL/g or lower. Due to the addition of grain refiner, the cast microstructure of 5083 alloy is refined. The Al-5Ti-1B wire shows the best refining effect among all the refiners. The refining effect is improved with the increase of grain refiner addition amount. And the refinement effects become stable when Ti content reaches 0.1% or higher. The surface crinkling defect of the billet can be easily found in the alloy refined with Al-5Ti-1B wire compared with the alloys refined with other refiners.