Improvement of Coercivity and Corrosion Resistance of Nd-Fe-B Sintered Magnets with Cu Nano-particles Doping

Nd-Fe-B permanent magnets with a small amount of Cu nano-particles doping have been prepared by con-ventional sintered method. Effects of Cu content on magnetic properties, corrosion resistance, and oxidation properties of the magnets have been studied. It shows that the coercivity rises gradually, while the remanence decreases simultaneously with increasing Cu doping amount. Microstructure observation reveals that Cu ele- ment enriches mainly the Nd-rich phase. Autoclave test results show that the corrosion rate of the magnets decreases with increasing Cu content. After oxidation, the maximum energy product loss of the magnets with 0 and 0.2 wt% Cu nano-particles doping are 6.13% and 0.g9%, respectively. Therefore, it is concluded that Cu nano-particles doping is a promising way to enhance the coercivity and corrosion resistance of sintered Nd-Fe-B magnets.

Multi-scale simulation of columnar-to-equiaxed transition during laser selective melting of rare earth magnesium alloy

A model of coupling macro finite volume method(FVM) and cellular automata(CA) is proposed in this paper to explore the columnar-to-equiaxed transition(CET) during selective laser melting(SLM) of rare earth magnesium alloy.Taking into account the impact of recoil pressure and Marangoni convection on the molten pool temperature field,the grain structure is simulated.As suggested by the simulation results,with the undissolved Zr serving as heterogeneous nucleation sites,the liquid undercooled layer under the combined action of forced cooling,the temperature gradient and the liquid solute concentration gradient leads to CET.While considering the dissolution of Zr in magnesium matrix,the results demonstrate that the dissolution of element Zr is effective in significantly inhibiting the growth of columnar crystals and ensuring the sufficient constitutional supercooling(CS) required for nucleation.In addition,to raise the preheating temperature contributes to enhancing the outcome of nucleation and incresing the grain size.Invoking the interdependence model(IM),with the cooling rate gradually increasing in the SLM process of magnesium alloy,the nucleation-free zone(NFZ) reduces by decreasing the solute diffusion layer in the front of the solid/liquid(SL) interface and the temperature gradient.The reduction in temperature gradient can promote undercooling for nucleation and facilitate the development of equiaxed crystals.The simulation results are qualitatively verified as highly consistent through experimentation.