Effect of Mischmetal on the Microstructure of the Magnesium Alloy AZ91

In this paper is discussed the effect of the inoculant mischmetal addition on the microstructure of the magnesium alloy AZ91. The concentration of the inoculant was increased in the samples within the range from 0.1% up to 0.6%. The thermal process was performed with the use of Derivative and Thermal Analysis (DTA). A particular attention was paid to finding the optimal amount of the inoculant, which causes fragmentation of the microstructure. The concentration of each element was verified with use of a spark spectrometer. In addition, the microstructures of every samples were examined with the use of an optical microscope and also was performed an image analysis with a statistical analysis using the NIS - Elements program. The point of those analyses was to examine the differences in the grain diameters of phase αMg and eutectic αMg+γ(Mg17Al12) in the prepared samples as well as the average size of each type of grain by way of measuring their perimeters. This paper is the second part of the introduction into a bigger research on grain refinement of magnesium alloys, especially AZ91. Another purpose of this research is to achieve better microstructure fragmentation of magnesium alloys without the relevant changes of the chemical composition, which should improve the mechanical properties.