EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

Zr-containing dispersoids act as barriers for grain boundaries movement to hinder recrystallization in aluminum alloys. However, they have a non-uniform distribution and small volume fraction, making it challenging to characterize their features in terms of size, volume fraction, and specific surface. The present work is about to answer the question: “is it possible to employ the Small-Angle Scattering (SAS) techniques to determine the important microstructural parameters of dispersoids in aluminum alloys?” to address the question, Small-Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) and Small-Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) were used to characterize the Zr-containing dispersoids in an industrial Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy. It was shown that it is possible to characterize the Zr-containing dispersoids by adopting an appropriate SAS technique and heat treatment approach as well as careful data evaluation. The results will be compared with other microstructure characterization techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and the new insights from the combinations of these methods will be discussed.