Comparative Study of Different Interfaces of Steel Inserts in Aluminium Castings

The necessity of preserving resources and to reduce environmental pollution makes light weight concepts highly interesting for the transportation market, with light weight being essential for newly developed electric and hybrid vehicles. However, some components cannot be replaced only by aluminium, but need to be combined with steel in order to achieve the desired mechanical characteristics. Therefore, there is great interest in developing processes to manufacture aluminium/steel hybrid structures that present a good bond. In the present work a range of processing conditions for improving the bond strength between S355J2H steel inserts and AlSi7Mg casting alloy were investigated. Before casting, different chemical, thermal and mechanical treatments were applied to the steel insert: As-received condition, preheating, shot blasting, pickling, hot dip aluminizing, hot dip galvanizing, zinc coating and nickel/copper plating. The steel/AlSi7Mg interfaces were characterized by optical microscopy (LOM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and x-ray diffraction (XRD). Special attention was paid to the presence of defects, formation of oxides and/or intermetallic phases in the reaction zone. The interface shear strength has been assessed by the push-out test, and the results have been correlated with microstructural observations at the interfaces. Combinations of different insert treatments were also investigated.