Joining of oxide dispersion strengthened Eurofer steel via spark plasma sintering

Abstract

This paper studies the joining of an oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) steel without destroying the microstructure and thereby deteriorating the mechanical performance. ODS Eurofer was successfully joined by spark plasma sintering (SPS) at 1373 K with a heating rate of 100 K/min and a pressure of 80 MPa. An almost defect-free joint was obtained with a holding time of 40 min and a powder layer between the steel disks. The fine-grained microstructure and homogeneously distributed nanoparticles in the material show no significant change after the joining process. The tensile properties of the joint material are comparable to the base material. SPS has been proven to be a promising technique to join ODS steels due to the good mechanical properties of the joints.