This will be very useful if they can find a way to make it without something that costs $12,000 per kg.
World-First 'Super Alloy' Could Transform the Way Metals Are Made
21–30 of 60 posts
Re: World-First 'Super Alloy' Could Transform the Way Metals Are Made
#22>It's two times stronger than steel, three times stronger than aluminum, and twice as strong as the same alloy made in a conventional way. Ugh. The most basic bitch metallurgy discussion possible. Oh! It’s stronger than aluminum?! So is bronze, we’ve hard that for awhile! Is the new material lighter than aluminum while being stronger? Is it corrosion resistant? Is it machinable? Can you weld it? Does it oxidize? Does…
Indeed, such "high-entropy" alloys have been known for decades, but they are rarely used because of high cost.
There is only one new fact in this research, which is however very interesting.
By mechanical working of the alloy, its crystal structure has changed to a mixture of grains with 3 different crystal structures, instead of being composed of homogeneous grains, like most solid-solution metallic alloys.
This change of crystal structure induced by mechanical working has doubled the strength of an already strong alloy, which is the novel and interesting result of this research.
The reason why this could happen is that the alloy contains similar amounts of metals that normally have distinct crystal structures. In alloys with a dominant metal, the alloy tends to have the same crystal structure as that metal, but in this alloy none of the crystal structures is preferred, so the grains take one of them randomly, during deep mechanical deformation.
Re: World-First 'Super Alloy' Could Transform the Way Metals Are Made
#23This is really cool metallurgy. They start with an alloy and deform it and because of elemental size mismatch they can cause the alloy to self assemble into nanoscale crystals with three different structures The paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec4995 As an aside, “super alloy” is not the best wording choice on the part of the author of this sciencealert article, superalloys are an established allo…
Buried in the article it sounds like the researchers consider it a Refractory High-Entropy Alloy (RHEAD)
Re: World-First 'Super Alloy' Could Transform the Way Metals Are Made
#24Now all we need to do is build an invincible giant robot out of it, to protect peace and justice from the forces of evil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazinger_Z https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chogokin
Unfortunately, the reality will be less spectacular.
Instead of one invincible giant robot, we will have invincible huge swarms of dwarf robots, which will be much more dangerous than any single entity.
Re: World-First 'Super Alloy' Could Transform the Way Metals Are Made
#25Hm I just read an article here recently that was saying that Americans had an edge in jet turbine blades production over china because Americans figured out how to make single crystal jet turbines using this same method. I wonder what the difference is.
An edge that dates back to the late 60's/early 70's? How soft is that edge by now?
The basics are pretty distributed, further work involved increasing lifespan at high temperatures, but also some work towards switching at least some turbine stages from separated blades into "blisks" - entire turbine stage is one crystal, including the hub.
Re: World-First 'Super Alloy' Could Transform the Way Metals Are Made
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
An edge that dates back to the late 60's/early 70's? How soft is that edge by now?
The basics are pretty distributed, further work involved increasing lifespan at high temperatures, but also some work towards switching at least some turbine stages from separated blades into "blisks" - entire turbine stage is one crystal, including the hub.
I've heard it said that growing crystals in gravity is tricky... If we could do this in space, gravity free, we could get better crystals.
Is that correct? Pardon for asking a bit of a question to your comment. I don't know too much about growing crystals for things like jet engine blades.
Re: World-First 'Super Alloy' Could Transform the Way Metals Are Made
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
The basics are pretty distributed, further work involved increasing lifespan at high temperatures, but also some work towards switching at least some turbine stages from separated blades into "blisks" - entire turbine stage is one crystal, including the hub.
I've heard it said that growing crystals in gravity is tricky... If we could do this in space, gravity free, we could get better crystals. Is that correct? Pardon for asking a bit of a question to your comment. I don't know too much about growing crystals for things like jet engine blades.
I, too, heard this but in a different context: pharma growing pure crystals for analysis by x-ray diffraction. There was a discussion a while back whether these lab-grown crystals were truly contributing to ISS’s reason to exist or an excuse to keep the lab going.
Re: World-First 'Super Alloy' Could Transform the Way Metals Are Made
#28Hm I just read an article here recently that was saying that Americans had an edge in jet turbine blades production over china because Americans figured out how to make single crystal jet turbines using this same method. I wonder what the difference is.
An edge that dates back to the late 60's/early 70's? How soft is that edge by now?
As hard as ever. US and USSR and EU has this tech, China, India and others still don't. When USSR tech was sold left and right in 1990s, China could not replicate it, although they surely got the documentation back then. Even now they can't build a reliable gas generator from 70s and are stuck at 1960s level with R-25 MiG-21-style engine replicas. They still try and fail to build AL-31 analogs (1978, Su-27 engine).
Re: World-First 'Super Alloy' Could Transform the Way Metals Are Made
#29> Tests showed the new alloy achieved a compressive yield strength of more than two gigapascals while retaining its ductility, meaning it bends without breaking.
This is sleight-of-hand.
For metals, the operative properties are usually ultimate tensile strength and tensile yield strength. Compressive strength is typically a non-factor for most engineering alloys; only concrete is judged by its compressive strength, and sometimes various engineering ceramics. (e.g. SiC, compressive strength = 3.9 GPa.)
About ten years ago, there were a lot of papers on amorphous metal alloys that had "extreme strength" -- compressive strengths in the 5-6 GPa range -- but tensile strength was not reported and very low. Some measure of ductility was also present, but it too was very low. Those amorphous alloys were classical brittle materials; more ceramic-like than metal-like. I fear the same is probably the case here, with the alloy potentially fracturing along crystal type grain boundaries.
Until they report actual tensile strength and elongation, don't believe the hype. High compressive strengths are not very useful.
Re: World-First 'Super Alloy' Could Transform the Way Metals Are Made
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
An edge that dates back to the late 60's/early 70's? How soft is that edge by now?
As hard as ever. US and USSR and EU has this tech, China, India and others still don't. When USSR tech was sold left and right in 1990s, China could not replicate it, although they surely got the documentation back then. Even now they can't build a reliable gas generator from 70s and are stuck at 1960s level with R-25 MiG-21-style engine replicas. They still try and fail to build AL-31 analogs (1978, Su-27 engine).
This is an American-Pro forum, you will only get dislikes promoting the idea that USSR had any technology or morality matching or exceeding Western superiority ;)