In situ high-energy X-ray diffraction of precipitation and dissolution reactions during heating of Al alloys

During heating of Al alloys, typically a sequence of precipitation and dissolution reactions occurs and the single (partly opposing) reactions superimpose. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) is one common technique to analyse the kinetic development of precipitation and dissolution in Al alloys, but the superposition of the exothermic precipitation and endothermic dissolution reactions complicates the DSC signal interpretation, as DSC measures the sum of any heat effect. Synchrotron high-energy X-ray diffraction (HEXRD) allows the kinetic development of phase transformations to be obtained and can support the separation of superimposed DSC signals. HEXRD results from this work offer a new approach to separate part of the superimposed reactions and their kinetic development for the equilibrium phases beta-Mg2Si in EN AW-6082 and eta-Mg(Zn,Cu,Al)(2) in EN AW-7150. Comparing DSC and HEXRD results confirms serious overlap issues. Common DSC evaluation methods alone, using zero crossing between endothermic and exothermic heat flow or peak positions can be misleading regarding individual reaction start and finish temperatures as well as regarding reaction intensities, which can be unambiguously determined by in situ HEXRD.