Unlocking the twinning stress: confidence inspiring light alloys

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The ultimate aim of this research is to reduce fuel consumption through weight reduction. It will achieve this by increasing the performance of the lightest structural metal, magnesium. Contrary to the metals it typically replaces (steel and aluminium), magnesium fails via mechanisms that involve deformation twinning. Better understanding of twinning is needed to enhance performance and give automotive makers confidence to apply the metal more widely. The applicants have recently found evidence that a key missing piece of the puzzle is the role of plastic relaxation. The proposed work will use this idea to develop a new fundamental understanding of twinning using novel in-situ diffraction and modelling techniques.