Development of ultra-fine grain structure in low SFE Cu alloys

There is a great technological interest in bulk-size ultrafine grained (UFG) materials (100-1000 nm) due to their superior mechanical properties in terms of strength, ductility and toughness as compared to their coarse grained counterparts. Copper-based alloys with UFG microstructure is imperative for the high strength and elevated temperature applications such as marine fittings, electrical switch gears, heat exchanger, aircraft and automobile industries. But, mechanical strength of conventional grained Cu-based alloys is limited although its ductility is quite high. Further improvement of the strength could be achieved via grain size refinement as per the Hall-Petch relationship through several severe plastic deformation techniques. Therefore, aim of the present work is to investigate various mechanical properties, especially tensile strength, fracture toughness and fatigue strength of low stacking fault energy (SFE) UFG Cu-Zn and Cu-Al alloys processed by cryorolling (CR) and multiaxial cryoforging (CF) followed by shortannealing.

Autorentext

Dr. Dasharath S. M. is an Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical Engg., REVA University, Bangalore. He obtained BE in Mechanical Engineering from VTU Belgaum, Masters in Manufacturing Engineering from National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK) Surathkal, Mangalore and PhD in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from IIT Roorkee.