Research by a UQ engineering student and his former honours thesis supervisor into magnesium alloys technology could help save petrol by reducing the weight of cars.
Senior lecturer in casting technology Dr Carlos Cáceres was awarded an Australian Research Council grant worth $170,000 to develop the work of PhD student Andrew Blake from UQ’s School of Engineering.
Dr Cáceres said the research was attempting to understand the hardening and softening effects of magnesium when high concentrations of aluminium and zinc were added. He said it could open the door to new alloys that could be used in commercial vehicles.
“The density of magnesium is about half that of aluminium. This makes magnesium a very attractive material when it comes to reducing the weight of cars and saving gasoline,” Dr Cáceres said.
“There is currently a boom in magnesium applications in the automobile industry and Australia has a growing strategic interest in the development of magnesium alloys technology.”
Dr Cáceres and Mr Blake’s research was recently featured as the Editor’s Choice in the prestigious European scientific journal Physica Status Solidi.
Editor’s Choice articles are part of the publication’s 40th anniversary celebrations and are intended to call the attention of the readers to particularly timely and interesting work and alert them to important new developments in solid-state physics.
Dr Cáceres said the brittle quality of magnesium could be overcome by adding small amounts of aluminium or zinc. He said this technique hardens it in places it is soft and softens it in places it is hard.
“Alloys are more ductile than the pure magnesium metal, a rather peculiar observation in metallurgy. There is a presumption that the softening and hardening effects are similar with high concentrations of aluminium and zinc but nobody knows for sure,” he said.
“Andrew has recently produced his first single crystals of concentrated magnesium-zinc and magnesium-aluminium alloys using a very sophisticated set up he has been developing over the past year.”
Dr Cáceres said the research was progressing well and could open the door to new alloys, both strong and ductile.
“It could therefore have a significant impact on the way magnesium alloys are used in current technology,” he said.
Media: For more information, contact Dr Carlos Cáceres (telephone 07 3365 4377, email: c.caceres@minmet.uq.edu.au) or Andrew Blake (telephone 07 3365 3639, email: a.blake@minmet.uq.edu.au) or Chris Saxby at UQ Communications (telephone 07 3365 2479, email: c.saxby@uq.edu.au).
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