Strengthening of the Fe-Ni Invar Alloy Through Chromium

oleh: Qingshuang Sui, Jun He, Xin Zhang, Zhonghua Sun, Yunfei Zhang, Yingfei Wu, Zhixiang Zhu, Qiang Zhang, Huifen Peng

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2019-04-01

Deskripsi

Invar alloys with both high strength and low thermal expansion are urgently needed in fields such as overhead power transmission, aero-molds, and so on. In this paper, Cr was introduced as a cost-efficient alloying element into the Fe-36Ni binary invar alloy to increase its mechanical strength. Our results confirmed that fine Cr<sub>7</sub>C<sub>3</sub> precipitants, together with some Fe<sub>3</sub>C, in the invar alloy aged at 425 &#176;C could be obtained with a short aging time. Those precipitants then grew and aggregated at grain or sub-grain boundaries with an increase in aging time. Simultaneously, mechanical strength and coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) parabolically varied with the increase in aging time. The sample aged at 425 &#176;C for 7 h presented a maximum strength of 644.4 MPa, together with a minimum coefficient of thermal expansion of 3.30 &#215; 10<sup>&#8722;6</sup> K<sup>&#8722;1</sup> in the temperature range of 20&#8211;100 &#176;C. This optimized result should be primarily attributed to the precipitation of the nanoscaled Cr<sub>7</sub>C<sub>3</sub>.