Effect of Electronic Structure on the Mechanical Behavior of the Transition Metal Carbides and Their Alloys

摘要

The program was concerned with the mechanical behavior of TiC, VC and TiC-VC alloys, the object being to correlate the mechanical behavior of these materials with their electronic structure. The major problem restricting the utilization of the carbides in practical applications is their extreme brittleness, which is thought to be a direct consequence of the rigid and directional bonding i.e. a high Peierls stress in the lattice. The original object of the program was to characterize the mechanical behavior of TiC-VC alloys and to associate this with changes in the occupancy of electron states and hence the Peierls stress in these alloys.