It has long been recognized that grain refinement of Mg-Al alloys is difficult, although various methods have been tried. In the present paper, a novel grain refiner, Al-3.4V-1B master alloy, has been developed to refine the as-cast AZ91 alloy. A comparative study on grain refinement effects of Al-3.4V-1B, Al-5V, and Al-3Ti-1B master alloys was performed under the same solidification conditions. It is shown that Al-3.4V-1B master alloy not only has significant grain refinement ability, but also keeps stable anti-fading capacity with holding time up to 2 h. Based on the analysis of grain refinement, VB2 particles introduced by Al-3.4V-1B master alloy are the heterogeneous nuclei for AZ91 alloy.

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