Grain refinement of aluminium and its alloys by heterogeneous nucleation and alloying

Grain refinement of aluminium and its alloys is common industrial practice. The field has been extensively investigated by many workers over the past 50 years, not only to develop efficient grain refiners for different aluminium alloys, but also to achieve an understanding of the mechanism of grain refinement. The present review confines itself to the literature on grain refinement by heterogeneous nucleation and alloying. Initially, the fundamentals of grain refinement by inoculants are outlined. The types of grain refiner, Al-Ti-B master alloys in particular, and their methods of manufacture are next discussed. The grain refining tests to assess the efficiency of the grain refiners and the grain refining behaviour of aluminium alloys are also discussed in brief. The performance of a grain refiner, as well as the response of an aluminium alloy to grain refinement, is influenced by the microstructure of the grain refiner as controlled by the process parameters involved in its preparation and the alloying elements present in the aluminium alloy. The roles of these factors, and particularly the roles of poisoning elements such as Si, Cr, Zr, Li, are reviewed. The paper also reviews the mechanisms of grain refinement, the fading and poisoning phenomena, and the trends in the development of new grain refiners for aluminium alloys containing poisoning elements.