Effect Of Boron On Microstructure And Properties Of Iron-rich Aluminum

Currently, the shortage of copper leads to copper`s price rising rapidly, whichcause Chinese cable industry being a big burden. Aluminum alloy cable overcome theshortcomings of pure aluminum cable and become the best substitute for copper cable;The "Rare earth iron aluminum alloy power cable "is one of those, which wasdeveloped independently in Chinese and already has been applied worldwide. It`ssignificant to the development of Chinese cable conductive material to the aim ofaluminum substitute for copper. In this paper, Optical Microscope(OM), scanningelectron microscope(SEM), Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy(EDS), X-raydiffraction(XRD), conductivity instrument, hardness tester and other analytical toolswere used. Iron-rich aluminum`s structures, conductivity and mechanical propertieswith different amount of boron (0.02%、0.04%、0.06%、0.08%、0.10%) are researched;And the effect of heat treatment on the iron-rich aluminum alloy was studied, whichprovided evidence for the production of iron-rich aluminum conductors.Experiment results show that Al-3B alloy has significant refining effect oniron-rich aluminum. According to the result of experiments, when the content ofboron was0.06%, the best conductivity could be obtained (33.64MS/m), and samples`Brinell hardness maintained between20~21HBW.The effects of T4and T6heat treatment on iron-rich aluminum alloy with0.1%boron were studied. The results showed that quenching(475℃×1h)and aging(160℃×12h),quenching(475℃×1h)and two-stages ageing(100℃×12h+160℃×12h) couldimprove conductivity by3%; Quenching(475℃×1h) and aging(160℃×12h),quenching(500℃×1h)and aging(160℃×12h) could improve Brinell hardness by4%.