Effect Of Lanthanum On Microstructure And Properties Of Iron-Rich Aluminum Alloy

Currently, the shortage of copper leads to copper’s price rising rapidly, which cause Chinese cable industry being in a big burden. Aluminum alloy cable overcome the shortcomings of pure aluminum cable and become the best substitute for copper cables. The "Rare earth iron aluminum alloy power cable" is one of those, which was developed independently in Chinese and already has been applied worldwide. It’s significant to the development of Chinese cable conductive material to the aim of aluminum substitute for copper. In this paper, optical microscope (OM), scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), conductivity instrument, hardness tester and other analytical tools were used. Iron-rich aluminum’s structures, conductivity and mechanical properties with different amount of lanthanum (0.02%、0.04%、0.06%、0.08%、0.10%) were researched. And the effects of heat treatment on the iron-rich aluminum alloys were studied, which provided evidence for the production of iron-rich aluminum conductors.The results show that Al-La alloy has significant refining effect on iron-rich aluminum. According to the result of experiments, when the content of lanthanum was 0.04%, the best conductivity could be obtained (33.66 mS/m), and samples’ Brinell hardness maintained between 22～23 HBW.The effects of T6 heat treatment on iron-rich aluminum alloy with lanthanum were studied. The results showed that quenching (480℃×1 h) and aging (160℃×12 h), quenching (500℃×1h) and ageing (160℃×12 h) could improve conductivity by 3.8%; Quenching (475℃×1 h) and aging (160℃×12 h), quenching (500℃×1h) and aging (160℃×12 h) could improve Brinell hardness by 11.8%.