Alloy Design for Heat Treatment of High Pressure Diecastings

Recently, heat treatment technologies have been developed by the CSIRO Light Metals Flagship in Australia that allow the yield stress in conventional aluminium HPDC’s to be more than doubled without encountering problems with blistering or dimensional instability. These procedures involve a severely truncated solution treatment step conducted at lower than normal temperatures followed by quenching and artificial ageing. Typically, heat treated HPDC’s may display increases to the yield stress of around 80 to 100%, but a range of other properties may also be improved such as fatigue resistance, thermal conductivity and fracture resistance for some tempers. However, the HPDC alloys currently used worldwide have not been developed specifically for heat treatment or the optimization of specific properties. In particular, recent work in Al-Si-Cu HPDC alloys has identified ranges of alloys specifically for achieving yield strengths exceeding 400 MPa, or for high strength combined with elevated ductility levels. The role of alloying elements, composition limits and effects on microstructure development are discussed.