A coupled model for precipitation strengthening in Mg-Zn alloys

A recently developed precipitation model is coupled to an original mechanical model to predict the strength evolution in Mg-Zn alloys during aging. The proposed models consider the strengthening effects of rod and plate-shaped precipitates on the most important deformation mechanisms in Mg alloys: basal slip, prismatic slip, and twinning. It is found that shearing of rod precipitates dominates the strengthening on basal slip at early aging stages, while the bypass mechanism dominates medium and over-aging stages. On prismatic planes, the bypass of rod precipitates dominates across all aging stages. The influence of different precipitate arrangements and aspect ratios on modelling results is also discussed. The strengthening from plate-shaped precipitates is found to be very poor for the studied slip modes. While for twinning, the strength evolution is nicely represented by bypassing of rod-shaped precipitates. The evolutions of tensile and compressive yield strength during aging are well predicted by considering the hardening on prismatic and twinning planes, respectively.