NANOMATERIALES

Vocabulary (No es necesario aprenderselo, una persona llevará una hoja con estas definiciones)
As Cast: Referring to metal which has not received finishing (beyond gate removal or sandblasting)
or treatment of any kind including heat treatment after casting.
Ultimate tensile strength(UTS): the measure of the maximum stress that an
object/material/structure can withstand without being elongated, stretched or pulled.
Yield Stress(YS): the stress at which predetermined amount of permanent deformation occurs.
%El: percentage of elongation.
Precipitation hardening (age hardening): is a heat treatment technique used to increase the yield
strength of malleable materials, including most structural alloys.
Clusters: a group of the same or similar elements gathered or occurring closely together.
Recrystallization - Upon more heating, new equiaxed small grains starts forming and replace the
original grain structure. Difference in the internal energy of strained and unstrained material
works as a driving force in this mechanism. This new structure possesses less dislocation density.
The extent of recrystallization depends on the time and temperature. The process of
recrystallization is also known as process of grain refinement.

FABIÁN
VALENTINA
NICOLÁS
PAULA

Introduction: the influence of natural aging on precipitation hardening of an Al–Mg–Si

alloy increases yield stress and reduces ductility, which is attributed to the formation of Mg/Si
clusters. Also, the excess of Si in solid solution can significantly alter the kinetics of precipitation
and the phase composition. The precipitation-hardening characteristics of the resulting Al–Cu–Si–
Mg alloys often appear to be relatively complex. This complexity is due to the formation of several
hardening phases including θ′ (Al 2Cu), β″ (Mg2Si), S′ (Al2CuMg), and the quaternary phase AlMgSiCu
which is designated as the Q (Al5Mg8Si6Cu2) or λ (Al5Mg8Si6Cu2) phase.

The addition of transition elements such as nickel (Ni) is considered to be effective for increasing
the room- and the high-temperature strength of cast Al–Si alloys by forming stable aluminides. As
with the as-cast condition, the ductility of alloys aged to a T6 temper decreases gradually as the Cu
content is increased. Nickel is added to Al–Cu and Al–Si alloys to improve hardness and strength at
elevated temperatures and to reduce the coefficient of expansion, as the existing Al–Si–Cu and Al–
Si–Mg alloy systems lose strength above 150 °C. The addition of rare earth metals leads to the
improvement in the hardness of Al alloys because the rare earth metals can react easily with Al to
form high melting point and infused/dispersed intermetallic compounds, which leads to grain
refining and the strengthening of the grain boundary regions. The change in the microstructure
(such as grain refining, improved grain orientation and proper secondary phase distribution)
results in an appreciable enhancement in the alloy properties.

Purpose: Study of the tensile properties in both the as-cast and heat-treated conditions, where the
effects of different heat treatments, i.e., T5, T6, T62 and T7, commonly applied to aluminum
casting alloys were evaluated at ambient temperature and at high temperature (250 °C) using
different holding or stabilization times at testing temperature. This is by doing the investigate of
the effects of alloying elements on the mechanical properties of two newly developed alloys, Al–
2%Cu–1.2%Si and and Al–8%Si–2%Cu bases alloys. The alloys were subjected to different heat
treatment conditions and tested at both ambient and high temperature, it was influence by the
addition of different elements (Ti, Zr, V, Ni, Sr, La and Cr) on the base alloys and the influence of
this alloys modified with high temperature (stabilized for 1 and 200 h at 250°C).

Procedure: The main experiment consisted on a base composition that has been grain-refined with
Al-5%Ti-1%B in order to achieve a Ti level of 0.15%, then other alloys were prepared from this
base by adding Sr, Ni, Zr, V, Cr, and La. As you can see in the table there were two different
variations of the base alloy series, the alloy B with low Si content and the alloy D with higher Si
content. The ingots were treated in order to make these alloys and do the respectively heat-
treated conditions.

In order to enhance the tensile properties, the as-cast test bars were subjected to different heat
treatment tempers the (a) single-stage solution heat treatment at 495 °C for 5 h (coded SHT 1) for
T6 and T7 tempers and a multi-stage solution treatment comprising 495 °C/5 h + 515 °C/2 h + 530
°C/2 h (coded SHT 2) for the T62 temper, followed by (b) quenching in warm water (60–70 °C), and
then (c) artificial aging at 180 °C for 8 h for T5, T6, and T62 tempers, and at 240 °C for 4 h in the
case of the T7 temper. Five test bars were used for each heat treatment condition. To measure the
UTS, %YS and %El it was used a test at ambient temperature and another at high temperatures
(250°C) with this the tensile properties were measure.

Results:
The multistage of the T62 temper was made in order to avoid the incipient melting of the copper
phase at the higher solutionizing temperature; this also gives a better homogenization prior to
aging, thereby improving the tensile properties.
Figure 7. The addition of Zr and Ti decreases the probability for porosity formation this makes an
improvement in the alloy strength. In order to enhance the tensile properties of an aluminum alloy
they add Zr because has the smallest diffusion flux in aluminum of all the transition metals, which
helps to improve/maintain the tensile properties.
Figure 8. The B1 and D1 alloys contain Ti and Zr, as was mentioned earlier in the context of the
UTS results, which promotes the formation of Al 3(Zr,Ti) precipitates and hence positively affects
the alloy tensile properties.
Figure 9. This can be attributed to the presence of Zr, Ni and Ti in the other alloys, which may
result in the formation of trialuminide dispersoids that would resist alloy softening in all alloys.

For high temperatures: found that the tensile properties showed a different tendency to those
observed at ambient temperature, resulting in improved YS, at the high temperature. The degree
of strengthening depends on the copper and magnesium content, and an increase in strength due
to higher levels of these elements is always accompanied by a corresponding decrease in ductility.

Figure 10,11. As in figure 9 the elements will resist the coarsening of the strengthening
precipitates. The D-series alloys exhibit competitive strength values when compared to the B-
series alloys, as opposed to the room-temperature behavior, with emphasis on the T7 condition.
This could be because of the Si content.

Figure 12. The B-series possess the highest ductility values in T7-tempered condition. Besides the
T62 and T7 tempers, the variations in ductility values between B- and D-series alloys obtained with
other heat treatment conditions are not high, contrary to what was observed under room-
temperature testing conditions.

The UTS and YS values obtained under these conditions are lower than the strength values
obtained after 1-h stabilization. 

Figure 13,14. The reduction in strength values is related to the coarsening of the strengthening
precipitates to the extent that the precipitates become completely incoherent with the matrix(B0
y D0).

Figure 15. This behavior emphasizes the effect of the chemical additions on resisting the softening
behavior of the base alloy B0, which is a result of the long thermal exposure at elevated
temperature. The role of the chemical additions is to form more stable intermetallics at higher
temperatures which maintain/improve the strengthening effect when the alloys are exposed to
higher temperatures for prolonged periods of time.

Conclusions:

 The tensile data showed that the ultimate tensile strength (UTS) and percentage
elongation values of the six alloys increased in the one-step solution heat-treated
condition compared to the as-cast case.
 The multi-step solution heat treatment displayed higher tensile properties than those
achieved with the one-step solution treatment.
 The use of the T62 treatment (multi-step solution treatment followed by artificial aging)
allows for maximum dissolution of the copper phases in the multiple stages of solution
treatment, resulting in the greatest improvement in both UTS and yield strength (YS).
  At ambient temperature, T6 and T62 treatments provide the best improvements in both
UTS and YS values of all alloys.