The impact properties of high-pressure die cast Mg-RE alloys were investigated. It was found that, for rare earth contents between 2-4 wt.%, the Mg-La and Mg-Nd alloys performed better than the Mg-Ce alloys in un-notched tests. The notched results appear to be related to the amount of intermetallic. In contrast, the un-notched results indicate that at some compositions the Mg-La alloys out-performed the other alloys when compared to the amount of intermetallic. It was apparent that a lamellar eutectic structure can improve the un-notched impact properties of Mg-RE based alloys even when this is not evidenced in tensile test or notched impact results.
