Enhanced Interfacial Bonding Properties in Non-Equilibrium State between Aluminum Matrix and Ultrafined Ni-Nb Glassy Particulate Reinforcements

In this paper, highly scattered fine-scale Ni-Nb base glassy particles were successfully produced by wet milling method. The Al-based metal matrix composites (MMC) comprising pure Al matrix and different amounts of Ni-Nb glassy powder reinforcement were fabricated by powder metallurgy, and their mechanical properties were examined by compression tests at room temperature. It’s proved that only the 2.5 to 5 wt.% addition of the glassy reinforcements enhanced significantly the yield strength of pure Al from 120 to near 200 MPa, while keeping considerable plastic deformation before the fracture strain at about 25%. These results showed that the highly scattered fine-scale glassy particles were efficient reinforcements in fabricating high-performance Al based MMC. The high yield strength of such composites blended with the low mass fraction of glassy particulates was roughly analyzed using Orowan shear model. Finally, the ductile fracture characteristics of the composites were analyzed by evaluating the Ni-Nb glassy/Al metallic interface energy.