Ultrafine-grained W-Cr composite prepared by controlled W-Cr solid solution decomposition

Abstract

The application of non-equilibrium methods such as Mechanical Alloying and Field Assisted Sintering enables the formation of a single solid solution in immiscible systems, or the ones characterized by a miscibility gap. This work shows that W-Cr solid solution can be used as an intermediate step to produce ultrafine-grained composite alloys with rod-like microstructural features. It is shown that a significant increase in strength can be achieved without an increase in hardness using this top-down material design.