Abstract
Light-weight high-temperature alloys are important to the transportation industry where weight, cost, and operating temperature are major factors in the design of energy efficient vehicles. Aluminum alloys fill this gap economically but lack high-temperature mechanical performance. Alloying aluminum with cerium creates a highly castable alloy, compatible with traditional aluminum alloy additions, that exhibits dramatically improved high-temperature performance. These compositions display a room temperature ultimate tensile strength of 400 MPa and yield strength of 320 MPa, with 80% mechanical property retention at 240 °C. A mechanism is identified that addresses the mechanical property stability of the Al-alloys to at least 300 °C and their microstructural stability to above 500 °C which may enable applications without the need for heat treatment. Finally, neutron diffraction under load provides insight into the unusual mechanisms driving the mechanical strength.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1070-1078 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Materials Horizons |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 2017 |
Funding
This research was sponsored by the Critical Materials Institute, an Energy Innovation Hub funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Advanced Manufacturing Office and Eck Industries. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. DOE with ORNL under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 and with LLNL under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. Work at the Molecular Foundry was supported by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the U.S. DOE under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. The use of the Advanced Photon Source, an Office of Science User Facility operated by Argonne National Laboratory, was supported by the U.S. DOE under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The authors thank Dr Jan Ilavsky for support on 9-ID-C of the APS and Dr Melissa Santala for preliminary TEM support.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Critical Materials Institute | |
| Eck Industries | |
| Office of Basic Energy Sciences | |
| U.S. DOE | |
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Advanced Manufacturing Office | |
| Office of Science | |
| Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy | |
| Argonne National Laboratory | |
| Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory | DE-AC52-07NA27344 |
| Oak Ridge National Laboratory | DE-AC05-00OR22725 |
