Low-temperature densification of ultrafine grained aluminum 6061-T6 by polymer bonding.

摘要

Ultrafine grained and nanocrytalline materials have many beneficial properties such as higher hardness, strength and wear resistance. A machining process has been developed as a new method to make nanostructured metals or alloys. Through the process, severe plastic deformation can be applied to metals or alloys and they become ultrafine grain and nanocrystalline in their structures. Because ultrafine grained alloys made by machining are made up to small chips, not bulk, to make bulk material, the alloy chips must be densified through processes such as sintering. Unfortunately, during the conventional sintering, the ultrafine grained alloys show grain growth at high rate and lose their hardness and strength. Therefore, low-temperature densification of ultrafine grained alloys has been pursued. In this thesis, ultrafine-grained (UFG) Al 6061-T6 particulate produced from machining chips have been consolidated and bonded using liquid epoxies that cure at 100?, below the coarsening temperature of the UFG structure. Two routes were explored---die-pressing premixed alloy particulate and epoxy and pressure infiltration of pre-pressed alloy particulate preforms. The effects of pressing pressure and epoxy viscosity were investigated.;In order to reduce porosity and contamination, three treatments---application of pressure during curing of epoxy, the cleaning of the alloy powder with NaOH solution and degassing epoxy before pressing---were tried. In order to overcome limitation of diepressing, infiltration method was compared with die-pressing and the resulting properties of the composite discussed. Bond thickness between the alloy particles increases with the viscosity of the epoxies. In the hardness results by micro-indentor, the value of composite with more than 80% volume fraction of Al alloy chip (Va) was more than 120 kg/mm2. In those measurements, the hardness of the composite depends mainly on the volume fraction of Al alloy and was clearly influenced by the boundary with epoxy and porosity. In the results by macro-indentor, the hardness of composite with more than 80% Va was more than 70 kg/mm2. It was concluded that alloy volume fractions of 0.8 to 0.9 were achieved with hardness greater than that of conventional bulk al 6061-T6.