Institute of Metals Division - The Effect of Purity on Grain Growth in Aluminum

Grain-gvowth data in zone-refined aluminum and in dilute alloys of copper with this aluminum have been obtained. The amounts of copper added were from 4 to 400 at. ppm. It was found that in both the unalloyed aluminum and the alloys grain growth was characterized by a high value of n in the isothermal growth equation 6n = Kt The inadvertent presence of 1 at. ppm Fe in the alloys was found to he more potent in slowing growth than the purposely added copper. Possible rationalizations of these observations and their general relevance to the theoretical use of gvain-grozvth data have been discussed. Grain growth data of Winegard and his co-workers' on zone-refined tin and dilute tin alloys were analyzed with some success2 in terms of approximate theoretical equations for boundary migration.2-4 In view of this success, experiments were carried out in an effort to obtain similar data on zone-refined aluminum and on dilute copper-in-aluminum alloys. The results obtained were anomalous in several respects and could not be used to test theory. A discussion of these anomalies is presented here; they have been attributed to impurity effects and serve to emphasize the sensitivity of grain growth in general—and the particularly high sensitivity in aluminum—to impurities. The resulting difficulties in the theoretical use of grain-growth data are also discussed. EXPERIMENTAL DETAILS An aluminum bar was zone-refined and leveled by methods similar to those described previously.' The degree of purity obtained is indicated in Table The data in Table I were determined by mass-spectrographic methods through the courtesy of Mr. Thomas A. Johnson of AIAG Metals, Inc.* Three dilute copper alloys with this aluminum were prepared also by methods described previously.' The alloys contained nominally 4, 40, and 400 at. ppm of Cu, respectively (0.001, 0.01, and 0.1 wt pct). Each material was fabricated by swaging and rolling into a round bar about 1/4 in. in diameter with an annealed penultimate grain size of approximately 0.003 to 0.007 cm. In order to minimize preferred orientation the fabrication was carried out in several steps, each consisting of a reduction of about 40 pct followed by a recrystallization anneal. Annealing temperatures for the grain-growth studies were attained by the use of boiling liquids up to 213°C and molten metal baths at higher temperatures. Temperatures were controlled to within 1°C. Samples for measurements were cylinders about 3/4 in. long and 1/4 in. in diameter cut from the fabricated rods. In the interests of sample economy a single sample was used for the grain-growth measurements at each temperature. Each sample was, thus, annealed for several successive periods of time, the grain size being measured at each annealing period on a transverse surface exposed by