Sharif Digital Repository

Copper based hybrid composites containing nano-sized silicon carbide and carbon nanotubes reinforcements with minimal porosity were fabricated via mechanical milling followed by hot pressing technique. Microstructures of the powders and consolidated materials were studied using scanning electron microscope, X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, and scanning transmission electron microscope. Microstructural characterization of the materials revealed that the addition of nanosized silicon carbide reinforcement lowered the grain growth rate and enhanced the homogenization during mechanical milling. Microhardness measurements and compression test showed considerable improvements in mechanical... 

The evolution of microstructure and the mechanical properties of an aluminum 6061 alloy tube subjected to a novel severe plastic deformation process called tube channel pressing were studied. Results show that the tube channel pressing causes an impressive grain refinement and strengthening of the material. As an illustration, mostly ultrafine grained tube (D-=760nm) bearing the yield strength of 352. MPa can be obtained after 5 passes of tube channel pressing. Additionally, the tube channel pressing causes the heterogeneous grain refinement resulting in a bimodal distribution of size of grains after 7th pass. Therefore, it can be inferred that the main microstructure refining mechanism... 

Plane strain compression (PSC) test was used to study the flow stress of ultrafine grained commercially pure aluminum at large strains. AA 1050 sheets were processed by various Accumulative Roll-Bonding (ARB) cycles up to 10 cycles as the initial specimens for the test. An approach was developed to measure the coefficient of friction and to suppress its effect on the results. It is shown that as a result of having an anisotropy parameter (R-value) of less than one, Von-Mises tensile strengths are significantly higher than PSC strengths. Comparing these strengths, the R-value as an average anisotropy parameter of rolling and transverse directions is estimated for the ARBed sheets, where it is... 

Accumulative roll bonding is a severe plastic deformation process used for Cu-Al-Mn shape memory alloy. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the possibility of grain refinement of Cu-9.5Al-8.2Mn (in wt.%) shape memory alloy using accumulative roll bonding and post-deformation annealing. The alloy was successfully subjected to 5 passes of accumulative roll bonding at 600 °C. The microstructure, properties as well as post-deformation annealing of this alloy were investigated by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimeter, and bend and tensile testing. The results showed that after 5 passes of ARB at 600 °C, specimens... 

Pure copper processed by a twist extrusion process with a reduced twist-line slope is investigated. Twist extrusion is a severe plastic deformation technique which is promising for scale-up because it allows for processing of relatively large metallic bars. On the way to commercialization, decreasing costs associated with processing is critical for twist extrusion. As one of the measures, reducing the twist-line slope - an important geometrical feature of twist extrusion - can be advantageous in terms of processing costs. The current study seeks to elucidate effects of reducing the twist-line slope on the microstructure, mechanical properties, and their heterogeneity in the processed metal,... 

Microstructural changes in friction-stir welding (FSW) of artificially aged AA2017 were investigated. First, FSW was performed with rotational and linear speeds of 800 rpm and 40 mm/min, respectively. Then, microstructural studies by means of optical metallography and electron microscopy were conducted in different regions of the welded plates. Hardness testing was also employed to determine local strength and subsequent natural aging progress after welding. The results indicate that the considerable hardness degradation occurs in the thermo-mechanically affected zone owing to coarsening of semi-coherent precipitates. Grain refinement also takes place in the weld nugget as a result of... 

Effect of Al2O3 nanoparticles (80 nm) on the grain structure and phase formation in Ni-50Ti system during high-energy mechanical alloying (MA) was studied. While the formation of NiTi B2 phase occurs progressively during MA, it is shown that the hard inclusions cause abrupt phase formation at short milling times, particularly at higher nano-Al 2O3 contents. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy showed significant grain refinement in the presence of alumina nanoparticles to sizes less than 10 nm, which precedes the formation of semicrystalline structure and reduces the diffusion length and thus accelerates the phase formation. The composite powder reached steady-state MA condition... 

An investigation was carried out on the grain refinement of molten AA5754 Aluminum alloy through intensive shearing. The results show intensive shearing via cavitation decreases the grain size significantly. The above hypothesis for structure refinement was evaluated and an experiment was performed to ensure the creditability of this assumption. Finally, it was simulated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling. It was understood that shearing is the responsible mechanism for creation of cavitation bubbles and further collapse of them. It was also concluded the pressure which generated from the collapse of the bubble is well enough for braking the oxide layer and wetting them. It was... 

Thermo-mechanical responses, developed microstructure, and mechanical properties in friction stir welding (FSW) of artificially aged AA2017 plates were investigated. A finite element analysis was first employed to evaluate hot deformation behavior of the alloy during welding. Also, hardness, yield strength, and microstructure of the welded alloy were examined using the results of the model and experimental testing. It was found that strain and temperature fields during welding are asymmetrically distributed and the maximum temperature locates in advancing side. Furthermore, considerable grain refinement is observed in the stir zone where recrystallized grains in the range of 3 to 8 m are... 

This study was undertaken to investigate the influence of Al-5Ti-1B master alloy and modified strain-induced melt activation process on the structural characteristics, mechanical properties and dry sliding wear behavior of Al-12Zn-3Mg-2.5Cu aluminum alloy. The optimum amount of Ti containing master alloy for proper grain refining was selected as 2. wt.%. The alloy was produced by modified strain-induced melt activation (SIMA) process. Reheating condition to obtain a fine globular microstructure was optimized. The optimum temperature and time in strain-induced melt activation process are 575. °C and 20. min, respectively. T6 heat treatment was applied for all specimens before tensile testing.... 

In this work, the 6061 aluminum alloy tubes are severely deformed through a novel method called Tube Channel Pressing (TCP). The ability of this process in improving mechanical properties, grain refinement and microstructural changes of the alloy with different heat treatments before and after TCP process is investigated. Results show that TCP has notable effect on grain refinement and decreases crystallite size of solid solution treated aluminum 6061 material to 52. nm after equivalent strain of 3.09 which is comparable with the measured data from other SPD processes. The strength of the specimens aged before TCP is higher than that of those aged after TCP. The specimens artificially aged... 

In this study, the microstructural and mechanical features of monolithic pure Cu and Cu matrix nanocomposites reinforced with three different fractions (2, 4, and 6. vol%) of SiC nanoparticles (n-SiC) fabricated via a combination of high energy mechanical milling and hot pressing techniques were investigated. The fabricated composites exhibited homogeneous distribution of the n-SiC with few porosities. It was found that the grain refinement, the planar features within the grains, and the lattice strains increase with increase in the n-SiC content. The yield and compressive strengths of the nanocomposites were significantly improved with increases in the n-SiC content up to 4. vol%; then they... 

A cyclic forward-backward extrusion (CFBE) process was used as a severe plastic deformation (SPD) technique to produce ultrafine-grained aluminum rods. Yield strength and tensile strength of the specimens increased by increasing the number of CFBE cycles, while elongation to break decreased due to an increase in the grain refinement and microhardness. According to transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) results, the average grain size was reduced from 120 μm to 315 nm after only 3 cycles of CFBE  

Cobalt is the most common binder in cemented carbides industry. However, there are some interests in use of alternatives. The similarity in properties has made nickel the first choice. In the present work, the effect of initial composition on modern hardmetals containing transition metal carbides/carbonitrides that are called "cemented carbonitrides" with nickel as binder was investigated. Change in quantity of additive carbides and tungsten to carbon (C/W) weight ratio through applying metallic tungsten powder in primary powder mixture had some effects on final hardness, transverse rupture strength, and microstructure of studied alloys. Addition of vanadium carbide not more than 0.2 wt.%,... 

Crystallographic texture is one of the most sensitive parameters for controlling the microstructure of electrodeposited layers. In this work, we study the crystallographic texture of electrodeposited nickel-silicon carbide coatings. The nickel coatings containing SiC nanoparticles and microparticles were electrodeposited from an additive-free sulfate bath containing nickel ions and SiC particles. The effect of current density on the codeposited Ni/SiC was studied. The coatings were analyzed with scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. Pole figure studies were done to characterize the evolved crystallographic texture. The X-ray scans followed by Rietveld analysis using the... 

A severe plastic straining method, called constrained groove pressing, is used to improve the microstructure and mechanical properties of non-hardenable 3003 Al-Mn alloy. Williamson-Hall method is utilized to measure the grain size from X-ray diffraction patterns of deformed samples. The results show that ultra-fine grained 3003 alloy having grain size of 580 nm can be successfully produced by constrained groove pressing at room temperature. Mechanical properties of sheets, examined by tensile test, are approximately exhibited 170% improvement in comparison with those of annealed sample. Also, comparing the achieved results with those of aluminum 1100 alloy confirms the rapid rate of grain... 

A new Voronoi diagram in Laguerre geometry based on closed-pack non-overlapping circles was proposed. This diagram was used to simulate microstructure of severely deformed materials at different applied strains. Grains size and their fractions were introduced by controlling the size and distribution of nuclei. Edge number distribution and neighboring cells edge number along with area distribution of the simulated Voronoi cells were determined. The edge number distribution was observed to fit gamma distribution more accurately. However, due to high inhomogeneity in the microstructure of the deformed samples at low strains, edge number distribution could not be matched by any distribution... 

A new severe plastic deformation (SPD) method entitled Tube Channel Pressing (TCP) is proposed. In this study, the ability of TCP on strength improvement and grain refinement is assessed. This method is based on pressing a tube through a tubular channel die with a neck zone. Utilization of a mandrel fitted inside the tube prevents the crumpling of tube and preserves its initial dimension. Due to the symmetric design, after one pass, the die is rotated upside down and the second pass is applied by pressing the tube in inverse direction. Ultimate strength of a commercial purity aluminum tube after 5 successful passes is improved to 2 times of the initial strength. Analytical calculations and... 

Nanostructured AA6063 (NS-Al) powder with an average grain size of ~100. nm was synthesized by high-energy attrition milling of gas-atomized AA6063 powder followed by hot extrusion. The microstructural features of the consolidated specimen were studied by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) techniques and compared with those of coarse-grained AA6063 (CG-Al) produced by hot powder extrusion of gas-atomized powder (without using mechanical milling). The consolidated NS-Al alloy consisted of elongated ultrafine grains (aspect ratio of ~2.9) and equiaxed nanostructured grains. A high fraction (~78%) of high-angle grain boundaries with average...