Effects of Elastic Contributions in Evolution of Nano-Structure Al3SC phase: A Phase-Field Study

Abstract

Abstract. A micromechanical phase-eld model is utilized to study the evolution of nanostructure Al3Sc phase in Al-Sc alloy. We study the formation of Al3Sc precipitates in an Al-Sc alloy by using an elastic phase-eld model. Since the precipitates of Al 3 Sc phase are fully coherent with the Al matrix, the elastic energy will have an in uence on the resulting morphology. We have studied the e ects of elastic strain energies on shape evolution of Al 3 Sc phase, numerically. The simulated nano-structures evolve from spherical to cubic shapes. The equilibrium shape of the coherent Al3Sc phase is found to be determined by minimizing the sum of the elastic and interfacial energies through the phase-eld equations. A coherency loss is observed when the precipitates reach a speci c size. The simulation results show good agreements with previous experimental studies.

The Effect of Alloying Elements on the Structural Stability, and Mechanical and Electronic Properties of Al3Sc: A First-Principles Study

“…In the past decades, Al-Sc alloys have attracted great attention, due to higher strength and stiffness, compared with pure Al [1,2]. The addition of Sc can greatly improve the mechanical properties of Al alloy, since a large number of nanoparticles (Al 3 Sc) are formed in the aging process [3,4,5], and Al 3 Sc with a cubic L1 2 structure has a small lattice mismatch with α-Al. However, the industrial application of Al 3 Sc has been limited because of the high cost of Sc, and the low solubility of Sc in Al.…”