Heat treatment of aluminum alloys with the natural combination of dopants

Tsepeleva Alisa - University of Chemical Technology in Prague (Czech Republic)

Aluminothermic reduction without separation of individual metals is currently considered by us as one of the possible methods for processing ferromanganese sea nodules and creating new alloys. In this study, the product of reduction – a manganese-based polymetallic mixture – was added to pure aluminum as a dopant. After extrusion, two new aluminum alloys with total percentage of metallic additives ranging from 1 to 6 percent were prepared. The purpose of the subsequent work was to check the possibility of thermal impact on the intermetallic phases in structure and to find the optimal heat treatment conditions for potential precipitation hardening of alloys. After each tested combination of annealing and artificial aging temperatures, the phase composition and the microstructure changes were recorded by X-ray diffraction, optical and scanning electron microscopy with EDS analysis. A comparative analysis of the results revealed insignificant changes in chemical composition and number of phases, which did not affect the original hardness of our alloys – hardening was not achieved.

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