A Review of Research Progress on Automotive Magnesium Alloy Wheels

Driven by the automotive industry’s strategies for energy conservation, emission reduction, and lightweighting, magnesium alloy wheels have emerged as a key focus of research and industrialization efforts, owing to their high specific strength, excellent vibration-damping properties, and superior heat dissipation performance. This paper provides a systematic review of the performance advantages, material systems, forming processes, applications, and industrialization challenges of magnesium alloy automotive wheels. The core advantages of magnesium alloy wheels in terms of weight reduction, vibration damping, and thermal management are elaborated. The compositional characteristics, suitable processes, and performance differences between cast magnesium alloys (e.g., AZ91D, AM60B) and wrought magnesium alloys (e.g., AZ80, ZK61-Y) are outlined. The technical characteristics, microstructural and property evolution, and limitations of casting processes (gravity, high-pressure, low-pressure, and semi-solid casting), plastic forming processes (isothermal extrusion forging, backward extrusion forging, and spin forming), and hybrid processes are discussed. Combined with the case studies of magnesium alloy wheel applications in the automotive sector, this paper analyzes the core bottlenecks of magnesium alloy wheels in terms of corrosion resistance, production cost, and industrial consistency, and outlines future research directions. This paper aims to provide theoretical references and technical support for the design, manufacturing, and large-scale application of lightweight, high-performance magnesium alloy wheels.