Towards self-healing creep resistant steels

We report the main findings of our work on the behaviour of binary Fe-Cu and Fe-Au model alloys designed to explore routes to create new creep resistant steels having an in-built ability to autonomously fill creep induced porosity at grain boundaries. The alloying elements were selected on the basis of their ability to be brought in...

Solid state phase transformations in steels: a neutron and synchrotron radiation study

Solid-state phase transformations in steels cover a broad range of aspects. The underlying physics behind these phase transformations usually include nucleation, diffusion, lattice reconstruction and interactions between solutes and grain boundaries and interfaces. These features and the fact that the events take place at high temperatures, in...

Self healing of creep-induced damage in Fe-3Au-4W by multiple healing agents studied by synchrotron X-ray nano-tomography

Constant stress creep experiments at 550 °C were performed on a high-purity Fe-3Au-4W (wt.%) ternary alloy with about 1 at.% supersaturation for Au and W in order to study self healing of grain-boundary cavities by both Au-rich and W-rich precipitates. Using synchrotron X-ray nano-tomography, the development of the creep cavities and the...

Self healing of creep damage in iron-based alloys by supersaturated tungsten

When metals are mechanically loaded at elevated temperatures for extended periods of time, creep damage will occur in the form of cavities at grain boundaries. In the present experiments it is demonstrated that in binary iron-tungsten alloys creep damage can be self healed by selective precipitation of a W-rich phase inside these cavities. Using...