Abstract

Interaction of iron and boron at elevated temperatures results in the formation of an E (Fe + Fe2B) eutectic phase that plays a great role in enhancing mass transport phenomena during thermal annealing and therefore in the densification of sintered compacts. When cooled down, this phase solidifies as interconnected hard and brittle material consisting of a continuous network of Fe2B borides formed at the grain boundaries. To increase ductile behaviour, a change in precipitates’ stoichiometry was investigated by partially replacing iron borides by titanium borides. The powder of elemental titanium was introduced to blend of iron and boron powders in order to induce TiB2 in situ formation. Titanium addition influence on microstructure, phase composition, density and mechanical properties was investigated. The observations were supported with thermodynamic calculations. The change in phase composition was analysed by means of dilatometry and X-ray diffraction (XRD) coupled with thermodynamic calculations.

Highlights

  • Due to a stable microstructure and mechanical properties under exposure to long-term thermal neutron irradiation, borated stainless steels find extensive applications in the nuclear industry [1,2].Potential applications of boron steels in nuclear industry are, e.g., control/shutoff rods in nuclear reactors, sensor for neutron counting, shapes for neutron shielding, dry transportation casks, spent fuel rod storage racks

  • As a measure for expected intensity, the absolute value of the Results of specular X-ray diffraction experiments are shown in Figure 5a together with peak squared structure factor is used

  • Bragg peak can be observed at 2 Theta = 44.7◦, corresponding to the 110 reflex of the cubic iron phase squared structure factor is used

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Summary

Introduction

Due to a stable microstructure and mechanical properties under exposure to long-term thermal neutron irradiation, borated stainless steels find extensive applications in the nuclear industry [1,2].Potential applications of boron steels in nuclear industry are, e.g., control/shutoff rods in nuclear reactors, sensor for neutron counting, shapes for neutron shielding, dry transportation casks, spent fuel rod storage racks. The advantage of borated stainless steel produced by powder metallurgy technology in comparison to the conventionally produced cast/wrought products is that they contain much smaller and more uniformly distributed boride particles [1,2]. It is possible to obtain a material whose properties have lesser decrease in ductility and impact toughness as the boron content increases compared with similar boron-containing cast/wrought borated stainless steels. The application of boron in powder metallurgy as addition to ferrous alloys has been of interest to numerous researchers over the last years [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. Even small amounts of boron (0.4–0.6 wt %) added to ferrous powder may result

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