Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) is widely used by the magnesium industry as a protective atmosphere. It has been demonstrated that SF6 prevents molten magnesium from further oxidation by reacting with magnesium to make the surface film on the magnesium melt denser. However, due to its high greenhouse effect (GWP=23900), the alternatives of SF6 must be sought. In this paper, 1,1-difluoroethane (commercially named HFC-152a), whose GWP value is only 140 and far lower than that of SF6, was tested to check its capacity of ignition-proof and further-oxidation-proof. Similar to SF6, the melt’s surface film formed in the protective atmosphere containing HFC-152a has a shiny metallic appearance. The surface film’s microstructure has been characterized with X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). XRD’s results showed that the film contains only MgO and MgF2 phases while SEM showed their morphologies are uniform.

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In this paper, single crystal of CuAlNiBe shape memory alloy (SMA) was prepared in a high temperature gradient directional solidification furnace with a selective growing crystallizer. And its performance characters were systematically studied. The results show that the mechanical and shape memory properties of the single crystal of CuAlNiBe SMA alloy has much better than that of the polycrystalline material. This may be explained that the stress concentration at grain boundary caused by the difference of bilateral strains is the dominant reason of deterioration of fatigue properties; therefore single crystal alloy possesses the excellent properties duo to its elimination of grain boundary.

With Bridgeman directional solidification method the single crystal alloys of CuAl base shape memory alloy (SMA) with different components were prepared. And their shape memory performance characters were systematically investigated. The results show that the single crystal of CuAlNiBe quaternary shape memory alloy has much better shape memory properties than that of the CuAlBe and CuAlNi ternary alloy. That meant that in the CuAl base SMA alloy the mixed addition of Be and Ni changed the quenching microstructure has a strengthening effect to improve the shape memory performance of the SMA alloy.

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