Institute of Metals Division - Discussion: On the Preprecipitation Process in Aluminum- Magnesium Alloys

Klaus Detert and Ludwig Thomas (Westinghouse Electric Gorp.)— The results of C. Panseri and co-workers are quite important. The authors came to the same conclusions about the occurrence of zone formation in A1-Mg alloys as was outlined in previous papers.31'32 Because of the sensitivity of their measurements, it was shown that zone formation could also occur at a much lower range of mag- nesium content than previously observed.31, 33 The idea of strong interaction between magnesium atoms and vacancies, as stressed by the authors, so that all of the quenched-in vacancies are kept in solution at lower temperatures but anneal out completely at 150°C, is in disagreement with our results which clearly indicate that zone formation and annealing out of vacancies occur simultane-