Atomistic Simulation of Dislocations in Mg and Mg-alloys

Abstract

Magnesium is a lightweight structural metal often used in the automobile/aerospace industry. It comes with satisfiable strength, but pure Magnesium exhibits low room temperature ductility, impeding further usage in large-scale productions. Alloying rare earth (RE) elements like Yttrium have been reported to activate more slip systems, leading to a significant increase in ductility compared to pure Mg or other Mg alloys of similar grain sizes. Previous research has revealed the origin of the problem to be its crystal structure and lack of activated slip systems. However, the specific role of RE elements remains unclear, and little research has been done to investigate how the interaction between clusters and dislocations could affect the dislocation glide mechanism. Here Yttrium clusters are points of interest and preliminary results are presented.