Furukawa Electric Review No.49The Development of the High Strength Aluminum Alloy Wire

Sho Yoshida, Shigeki Sekiya, Kengo Mitose

The development of the high strength aluminum alloy wire, to be used as an industrial wire, was implemented. The development is intended to obtain characteristics that can withstand the practical use even as electrical wires with comparatively small diameter, and additive amounts of Mg and Si were optimized by investigating their effects influencing the electrical conductivity, the tensile strength and the elongation due to the additive amounts of Mn and Si in the Al-Mg- Si alloy. Also, a relation between the additive amount of Mg and a grain-refining effect was investigated and the additive amount of Mn was optimized, then it led to the successful development of the alloy having the high elongation characteristic based on the suppression of a grain coarsening during a high temperature solution heat treatment after a cold wire drawing process. Furthermore, by a Ni addition, we succeeded to suppress the decrease in the elongation characteristic and to improve the tensile strength characteristic, and we found out that a high impact resistance could be achieved. In addition to the above investigation, by examining an age-hardening heat treatment condition, we succeeded in the development of the aluminum alloy wire which is well balanced in the electrical conductivity, the tensile strength and the elongation at a high level.