Abstract
Magnesium alloys have great potential for use as structural materials since they are the lightest of all structural alloys in use. In order to use magnesium alloys in structural applications, it is important to ensure that their mechanical properties satisfy both reliability and safety requirements. One of the methods of ensuring that is to investigate the fracture toughness. However, the value of fracture toughness in magnesium alloys has been generally reported to be much lower than that in aluminum alloys. In this study, commercial Mg-Al-Zn alloys having different grain sizes, which were produced by hot extrusion, were used to examine the fracture toughness and deformed microstructures, i.e., after fracture toughness tested samples. The lower fracture toughness of magnesium alloy was related to the formation of deformation twins during fracture toughness tests.
