Computational thermodynamics and experimental investigation of Mg-Al-Ca alloys

The thermodynamic properties of the ternary Mg-Al-Ca system are investigated, based on the three binary systems, i.e. the Al-Mg, Ca-Mg and Al-Ca systems. The ternary system contains six different intermetallic compounds with five of them treated as stoichiometric compounds. The calculated ternary system and Scheil simulations are used to understand the microstructures and phase relationships during solidification. Metallographic samples are prepared for the optical microscopy and SEM observations. The phase amounts were measured and compared with the calculated results. The calculations will be used to direct new experiments in the project for fine-tuning of the phase relationships.