Enhancing fatigue life by ductile-transformable multicomponent B2 precipitates in a high-entropy alloy

Rui Feng, You Rao, Chuhao Liu, Xie Xie, Dunji Yu, Yan Chen, Maryam Ghazisaeidi, Tamas Ungar, Huamiao Wang, Ke An, Peter K. Liaw

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

142 Scopus citations

Abstract

Catastrophic accidents caused by fatigue failures often occur in engineering structures. Thus, a fundamental understanding of cyclic-deformation and fatigue-failure mechanisms is critical for the development of fatigue-resistant structural materials. Here we report a high-entropy alloy with enhanced fatigue life by ductile-transformable multicomponent B2 precipitates. Its cyclic-deformation mechanisms are revealed by real-time in-situ neutron diffraction, transmission-electron microscopy, crystal-plasticity modeling, and Monte-Carlo simulations. Multiple cyclic-deformation mechanisms, including dislocation slips, precipitation strengthening, deformation twinning, and reversible martensitic phase transformation, are observed in the studied high-entropy alloy. Its improved fatigue performance at low strain amplitudes, i.e., the high fatigue-crack-initiation resistance, is attributed to the high elasticity, plastic deformability, and martensitic transformation of the B2-strengthening phase. This study shows that fatigue-resistant alloys can be developed by incorporating strengthening ductile-transformable multicomponent intermetallic phases.

Original languageEnglish
Article number3588
JournalNature Communications
Volume12
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1 2021

Funding

R.F. and P.K.L. appreciate the support of the National Science Foundation under grants of DMR-1611180 and 1809640 and the US Army Research Office under project numbers of W911NF-13-1-0438 and W911NF-19-2-0049. The authors acknowledge the use of electron microscopy facilities at the Joint Institute for Advanced Materials (JIAM) of The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK). This research used resources at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Synchrotron diffraction was conducted at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a US DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) under the Contract No. of DE-AC02-06CH11357. R.F. thanks for the support from Materials and Engineering Initiative at SNS, ORNL. The authors thank Dr. M. J. Frost at SNS for the technical support.

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