Magnesium alloy is a metal with high specific strength and light weight, and is attracting attention as a next generation metal for environmentally friendly automobiles and transportation equipment. However, magnesium alloys have a problem of degrading formability due to the basal texture developed during processing, and their application is limited. Although active researches on the control of textures have been conducted in order to minimize this problem, there is a lack of research on the formation of microstructures and textures according to elemental differences. In this study, AZ61 and AZ80 magnesium alloys were selected to investigate the effects of aluminum addition on the microstructure development of magnesium alloys. This research has proven that the increase of the rolling rate results in the decrease of the average grain size of the two alloys, the increase of the hardness, and the increase of the fraction of twins. As shown on this research below, the basal texture developed strongly as the rolling ratio increased. On the other hand, this research also has proven that the two alloys exhibited different texture strength and distribution tendencies, which could be due to the effects of aluminum addition on work hardening, grain size, and twin behavior.

In the present study, we investigated whether the surface oxidation of C-bearing TWIP steel ℃curs in the air during specimen delivery from an annealing furnace to a water bath and how the microstructure and tensile properties are influenced by surface oxidation. A cold-rolled Fe-18Mn-0.6 (wt%) steel was exposed in the air for 5 s after annealing at various temperatures (750℃, 850℃ and 1000℃) for 10 min in a vacuum, and then water-quenched. For comparison, another specimen, which had been quartz-sealed in a vacuum, was annealed at 1000℃ for 10 min and immediately water-quenched without exposure to air. The 750℃ and 850℃-annealed specimens and the quartz-sealed specimen showed a γ-austenite single phase in the entire specimen due to negligible surface oxidation. However, the 1000℃-annealed specimen exhibited a dual-phase microstructure consisting of ε-martensite and γ-austenite at the sub-surface due to decarburization. Whereas the specimens without decarburization revealed high elongations of 70-80%, the decarburized specimen exhibited a low elongation of ~40%, indicating premature failure due to cracking inside the decarburized layer with ε-martensite and γ-austenite.

To study the effects of tempering on microstructure and mechanical property of Cu-22 wt.%Sn alloy, tempering was carried out for 30 sec, 1 min, 5 min, 30 min, 3 h, 5 h, and 10 h at 325, 370, 500, and 570℃, which are in the (α+ε), lower (α+δ), higher (α+δ), and (α+γ) region of Cu-Sn phase diagram, respectively. Overall, the hardness value increased and decreased over time at all tempering temperatures, and the time to reach the maximum hardness value beccame shorter as the tempering temperature increases. At the beginning of tempering at each temperature, a portion of the β' phase was decomposed into a fine (α+δ) phase or (α+γ) phase, so that the Cu-22Sn alloy had a high hardness value. However, as the tempering time increases, the hardness value of the alloy decreased due to the growth of the decomposed phases.

To improve the mechanical properties of most structural materials for industrial applications, the control of microstructure is essential by heat treatment process or plastic deformation process. Since the mechanical behavior of structural materials is significantly influenced by their microstructure, it is inevitably preceded to understand the relationship between microstructure and strengthening mechanisms of materials which can be easily changed by heat treatment. In this regard, the nanoindentation test is useful technique for analyzing the influence of the localized microstructural change on small-scale mechanical behavior of various structural materials. Here, the interesting studies performed on various heat-treated materials are reviewed with focus on micromechanical properties obtained by nanoindentation, which are reported in the available literature.