The precipitation behavior of a pretwinned Mg–6Al–1Zn alloy and the effect on subsequent deformation

In this study, the precipitation behavior of the pretwinned extruded Mg–6Al–1Zn alloy was investigated. It was observed that the precipitates preferentially nucleated at the twin boundaries or within the preexistent twins. This distribution of the precipitates led to the distinguishing influences on subsequent compression and tension process, which were dominated by twinning and detwinning of the preexistent twins, respectively. The compressive yield strength after aging was a little lower than the stress when the precompression was interrupted, which meant that the impeding effect of precipitation on twin expansion was relatively smaller than that of dislocations induced by precompression. However, the tensile yield strength of aged samples was extremely higher than that of non-aged samples as the migration of the twin boundaries during detwinning was considerably hindered because of the preferential precipitation within the preexistent {10-12} twins.