No abstract

No abstract

This article describes the room-temperature fracture behavior of ductile-phase-toughened V-V 3 Si in situ composites that were produced by arc melting (AM), cold-crucible induction melting (IM), and cold-crucible directional solidification (DS). Composites were produced containing a wide range of microstructures, interstitial impurity contents, and volume fractions of the ductile V-Si solid solution phase, denoted (V). The fracture toughness of these composites generally increases as the volume fraction of (V) increases, but is strongly influenced by the microstructure, the mechanical properties of the component phases, and the crystallographic orientation of the (V) phase with respect to the maximum principal stress direction. For eutectic composites that have a (V) volume fraction of about 50 pct, the fracture toughness increases with decreasing ''effective'' interstitial impurity concentration, [I] ϭ [N] ϩ 1.33 [O] ϩ 9 [H]. As [I] decreases from 1400 ppm (AM) to 400 ppm (IM), the fracture toughness of the eutectic composites increases from 10 to 20 MPa. Further, the fracture ͌m toughness of the DS eutectic composites is greater when the crack propagation direction is perpendicular, rather than parallel, to the composite growth direction. These results are discussed in light of conventional ductile-phase bridging theories, which alone cannot fully explain the fracture toughness of V-Si in situ composites.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

The primary and steady-state creep behavior of ductile-phase toughened Nb5Si3/Nb in-situ composites has been simulated using analytical and finite element (FE) continuum techniques. The microstructure of these composites is complex, consisting of large, elongated primary dendrites of the ductile (Nb) solid-solution phase in a eutectoid matrix with the silicide as the continuous phase. This microstructure has been idealized to facilitate the modeling; the effects of these idealizations on the predicted composite creep rates are discussed. Further, it has been assumed that the intrinsic creep behavior of each phase within the composite is the same as that of the corresponding bulk material. Thus, the experimentally measured creep properties of the bulk Nb5Si3 and (Nb) phases have been analyzed to provide the required material constants in the creep constitutive equation. Model predictions of the steady-state composite creep rate have been compared with the experimental results for a Nb-10 at.% Si alloy. While accurate at low stress, the models underpredict the composite creep rate at large stresses because the composite stress exponent is underpredicted. In the case of primary creep, the models somewhat over-predict the composite creep strain but are reasonably accurate given uncertainties in the primary creep data. Finally, FE predictions of the tensile stress distributions within the composites have been shown to be qualitatively consistent with the cracking observed experimentally during tertiary creep.