Grain Refinement of High-Iron Aluminum Alloy by Inoculation with Al-B Master Alloy

Abstract

Aluminum cables are playing an increasingly important role in power transmission system, in which the “rare-earth high-iron aluminum alloy power cables were developed in China. In this paper, the effects of B on grain refinement of high-iron aluminum alloy were studied by using OM (optical microscopy), SEM (scanning electron microscopy), EDX (energy dispersive X-Ray spectroscopy) and XRD (X-ray diffraction). And the conductivity of high-iron aluminum alloy was also tested. The results showed that B could take significant effects on grain refinement and promote the increase of conductivity. The refinement may be mainly due to the eutectic reaction in solidification process and the formation of AlB2 particles. The optimal concentration of B was determined as 0.06 wt. %.