The corrosion behavior of keyhole-free friction stir spot welded joints of dissimilar 6082 aluminum alloy and DP600 galvanized steel in 3.5% NaCl solution has been investigated by the immersion test and electrochemical analysis. The surface of the aluminum alloy produced exfoliation and pitting corrosion. The pitting occurred seriously on the interface of the 6082 aluminum alloy, but the steel had no corrosion. The corrosion galvanic couples were formed between elements of Si and Fe with a high electrode potential, and Mg and Al with a low electrode potential, around them. Mg and Al elements of Mg₂Si and Si-containing solid-solution phase α (Al) preferentially became an anodic dissolution and formed exfoliation corrosion around the Si elements. Fe-rich phase θ (Al₃Fe) as the cathode caused corrosion of Mg and formed pitting around Mg-rich phase β (Al₃Mg₂) as the anode. The sequence of the corrosion resistance of different areas of the joints (with decreasing corrosion resistance) was WNZ (Weld Nugget Zone) > TMAZ (Thermo-mechanically Affected Zone) > BM (Base Metal) > HAZ (Heat-affected Zone). The joints of keyhole-free FSSW (Fiction Stir Spot Welding) of dissimilar 6082 aluminum alloy and DP600 galvanized steel have better corrosion resistance than base metal in 3.5% NaCl solution. Full article

In this work, a compression experiment of 35CrMo steel is carried out over a wide range of temperatures (1123–1423 K) and strain rates (0.1–10 s⁻¹) to obtain further understandings of the flow behaviors. The results show that the strain hardening effect of 35CrMo steel is stronger than that of dynamic recrystallization at low temperature and high strain rate; on the contrary, the rheological curves show typical dynamic recrystallization characteristics at high temperature and low strain rate. This indicates that the strain hardening and recrystallization behavior of 35CrMo steel is affected by temperature, strain and strain rate, and its true stress-strain curves can be observed typical work hardening and dynamic softening features. A modified Johnson-Cook (JC) model is developed to predict the flow stress of the alloy. The results of the comparison show that the predicted values of the modified JC model are in good agreement with the experimental values. Full article

The article presents the results of experimental testing of corrosion processes on weathering steel bridges. Two bridge structures spanning various obstacles were selected for the experimental measurement. The tested bridges are situated in the same location and structural solution of these bridges is similar. Differences in development of corrosion products are mainly affected by the microclimate below the bridge structure. Special attention is paid to a bridge over the motorway which is strongly affected by the deposition of chlorides. The dependences between the measured deposition of chlorides and parameters of corrosion layers (thickness of corrosion products, corrosion rates, and chemical composition) are discussed and evaluated in this article. Full article

Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) are a promising family of materials for applications where a high strength-to-weight ratio is required. Central burst is a typical defect commonly found in parts formed by extrusion and it can be a serious problem for the in-service performance of the extrudate. The finite element method is a very useful tool to predict this type of internal defect. In this work, the software DEFORM-F2 has been used to choose the best configurations of multiple-pass dies, proposed as an alternative to single-pass extrusions in order to minimize the central damage that can lead to central burst in extruded parts of AHSS, particularly, the dual-phase steel DP800. It has been demonstrated that some geometrical configurations in double-pass dies lead to a minimum value of the central damage, much lower than the one obtained in single-pass extrusion. As a general rule, the position of the minimum damage leads to choosing higher values of the contacting length between partial reductions (L) for high die semiangles (α) and to lower values of the reduction in the first pass (R_A) for low total reductions (R_T). This methodology could be extended to find the best configurations for other outstanding materials. Full article

Grain boundary engineering (GBE) is a thermomechanical processing technique used to control the distribution, arrangement, and identity of grain boundary networks, thereby improving their mechanical properties. In both GBE and non-GBE metals, the phenomena of abnormal grain growth (AGG) and its contributing factors is still a subject of much interest and research. In a previous study, GBE was performed on minimally strained (ε < 10%), commercially pure Nickel-200 via cyclic annealing, wherein unique onset temperature and induced strain pairings were identified for the emergence of AGG. In this study, crystallographic segmentation of grain orientations from said experiments are leveraged in tandem with image processing to quantify growth rates for abnormal grains within the minimally strained regime. Advances in growth rates are shown to vary directly with initial strain content but inversely with initiating AGG onset temperature. A numeric estimator for advancement rates associated with AGG is also derived and presented. Full article

Resistance upset welding is successfully applied to Oxide Dispersion Strengthened (ODS) steel fuel cladding. Due to the strong correlation between the mechanical properties and the microstructure of the ODS steel, this study focuses on the consequences of the welding process on the metallurgical state of the PM2000 ODS steel. A range of process parameters is identified to achieve operative welding. Characterizations of the microstructure are correlated to measurements recorded during the welding process. The thinness of the clad is responsible for a thermal unbalance, leading to a higher temperature reached. Its deformation is important and may lead to a lack of joining between the faying surfaces located on the outer part of the join which can be avoided by increasing the dissipated energy or by limiting the clad stick-out. The deformation and the temperature reached trigger a recrystallization phenomenon in the welded area, usually combined with a modification of the yttrium dispersion, i.e., oxide dispersion, which can damage the long-life resistance of the fuel cladding. The process parameters are optimized to limit the deformation of the clad, preventing the compactness defect and the modification of the nanoscale oxide dispersion. Full article

High energy mechanical milling followed by hot-pressing consolidation has been used to produce nanostructured Al–5 wt %Si alloy. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy equipped with energy dispersive X-ray detector (SEM-EDX), Vickers hardness, and compression measurements were used to examine the effect of milling duration on microstructure and mechanical properties of the nanostructured consolidated alloys. Crystallite sizes and lattice strains were determined by X-ray peak broadening analysis using the Williamson-Hall (W-H) method. Increasing the milling time reduced the crystallite size, and the minimum crystallite size of about 33 nm was achieved for both consolidated and powdered samples after 50 h of milling. Based on the SEM-EDX observations, the best distribution of silicon into Al matrix was obtained after 20 h of milling and remained unchanged afterwards. Hardness of both consolidated and powder samples increased with milling time, which can be attributed to the reduction of crystallite size and the better distribution of silicon in the aluminum matrix. Similarly, increased milling time increased the yield and compressive strengths of consolidated samples. Full article

The flow behavior of 5754 aluminum alloy was researched using the plane strain compression test for the range of 300–500 °C and 0.1–10 s−1. The experimental flow curves acquired directly from Gleeble-3500 show that deformation parameters have a significant effect on the flow curves. All curves show a broad peak due to the dynamic softening after the work hardening. In addition, the flow curves display a slight downward trend after reaching the peak stress at low and medium strain rates. This softening mechanism has been further investigated by the work hardening rate and the results show that the flow characteristics of 5754 aluminum alloy are mainly controlled by the mechanism of competition between hardening, dynamic recovery and continuous dynamic recrystallization. Based on the corrected true strain-stress curves, the constitutive model of the corresponding softening mechanism has been established by a linear regression method. Then, the developed model was embedded in the finite element (FE) analysis software (ABAQUS) by encoding the UHARD subroutine and the hot compression process of the alloy was simulated and analyzed. The simulation results show that the sample has an uneven flow in the deformation zone, which is consistent with the grain morphology of the corresponding region of the test sample. In addition, the simulated load-stroke values were well fitted to the experimental data. The predictive ability of the model was quantified by statistical indicators. It emerged that the FE of the embedded constitutive model effectively simulates the hot working process of 5754 aluminum alloy, which has reference value for actual processing. Full article

The aim of this work was to develop a method to evaluate the kinetics of bainite transformation by theoretical deduction and thermal dilatation curve analysis. A Gleeble-3500 thermomechanical simulator and dilatometer (DIL805A) were employed to study the isothermal transformation in deformed (360 ${}^{\circ }\mathrm{C}$ , 600 ${}^{\circ }\mathrm{C}$ , and 860 ${}^{\circ }\mathrm{C}$ ) and undeformed conditions. The thermal dilatation information during isothermal transformation was recorded, and the dilatation curves were well smoothed. By taking a derivative of the dilation curve with respect to the transformation time, the peak time of transformation rate (PTTR) was obtained, which can serve as the essence of isothermal transformation time. The relative change of length ( $\Delta L/L$ ) due to phase transformation was theoretically deduced, and the effect of temperature was taken into consideration. Combing experimental data, the volume fraction of bainite in isothermal transformation was calculated. Making a graph of volume fraction versus PTTR was a good method to evaluate the kinetics of bainitic transformation clearly and concisely which facilitated optimization of the preparation technique for low-temperature nanobainitic steel. Full article

In this work, the effect of the sintering temperature on the microstructure and mechanical properties of Nb-V added powder metallurgy (PM) steels was investigated. The microstructure and mechanical properties of the Nb-V added PM microalloyed steel were examined by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), optical emission spectrometer (OES), tensile and hardness tests. Results indicated that the optimal sintering temperature was 1350 °C and the addition of 0.1%, 0.15% or 0.2% of Nb-V increases the yield strength (YS), ultimate tensile strength (UTS) and hardness of the PM sintered steels. 0.2 wt % Nb-V added PM steel showed the highest values in yield strength (YS), ultimate tensile strength (UTS) and the highest hardness. Elongation also tends to improve with adding Nb-V content. In addition, Nb-V limited grain growth during austenitization. Full article

The processing map of Ni₄₇Ti₄₄Nb₉ (at %) shape memory alloy (SMA), which possesses B2 austenite phases and β-Nb phases at room temperature, is established in order to optimize the hot working parameters. Based on true stress-strain curves of NiTiNb SMA during uniaxial compression deformation at the temperatures ranging from 700 to 1000 °C and at the strain rates ranging from 0.0005 to 0.5 s⁻¹, according to dynamic material model (DMM) principle, the processing map of NiTiNb SMA is obtained on the basis of power dissipation map and instability map. The instability region of NiTiNb SMA increases with increasing the true strain and it mainly focuses on the region with high strain rate. The workability of NiTiNb SMA becomes worse and worse with increasing plastic strain, as well as decreasing deformation temperature. There exist two stability zones which are suitable for hot working of NiTiNb SMA. In one stability region, the deformation temperature ranges from 750 to 840 °C and the strain rate ranges from 0.0003 to 0.001 s⁻¹. In the other stability region, the deformation temperature ranges from 930 to 1000 °C and the strain rate ranges from 0.016 to 0.1 s⁻¹. The severe microstructure defects, such as coarsening grains, band microstructure, and intercrystalline overfiring appear in the microstructures of NiTiNb SMA which is subjected to plastic deformation in the instability zone. Full article

AuPd nanoparticles are formed on fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) by a nanosecond laser irradiation-induced dewetting process of deposited AuPd films. In particular, we analyze the effect of the surface topography of the substrate on the dewetting process and, so, on the final mean size of the formed nanoparticles. In fact, we used two supporting FTO substrates differing in the surface topography: we used a FTO layer which is un-intentionally patterned since it is formed by FTO pyramids randomly distributed on the glass slide as result of the deposition process of the same FTO layer, namely substrate A. We used, also, a further FTO substrate, namely substrate B, presenting, as a result of a chemical etching process, a higher roughness and higher mean distance between nearest-neighbor pyramids with respect to substrate A. The results concerning the size of the obtained AuPd NPs by the laser irradiations with the laser fluence fixed shows that the substrate topography impacts on the dewetting process. In particular, we found that below a critical thickness of the deposited AuPd film, the NPs formed on substrates A and B have similar size and a similar trend for the evolution of their size versus the film thickness (i.e., the dewetting process is not influenced by the substrate topography since the film does not interact with the substrate topography). On the other hand, however, above a critical thickness of the deposited AuPd film, the AuPd NPs show a higher mean size (versus the film thickness) on substrate B than on substrate A, indicating that the AuPd film interacts with the substrate topography during the dewetting process. These results are quantified and discussed by the description of the substrate topography effect on the excess of chemical potential driving the dewetting process. Full article

Metallurgical concepts for new ultra-high strength martensitic steels have been developed through direct quenching after hot rolling. In addition to the chemical composition, the hot rolling, quenching, and annealing parameters need to be optimized to fulfill the requirements for the demanding applications for which these steels are used. It is also shown that the welding behavior is influenced by the choice of alloying concept. Typical applications also require a high fatigue resistance, especially of formed components. For that reason, a dedicated set-up was developed that allows differentiation between materials, which is illustrated through the effect of inclusions on the fatigue performance of a bent test piece. Full article

The work addresses the effects of nanosize particles and grain refinement on the patterns of stress serrations and kinematics of deformation bands associated with the Portevin–Le Chatelier instability of plastic flow. Ultra-fine-grained microstructure was obtained using equal-channel angular pressing of the initial coarse-grained alloy. Tensile tests were carried out on flat specimens at strain rates in the range from 3 × 10⁻⁵ to 1.4 × 10⁻² s⁻¹. Using local extensometry techniques, it was found that the presence of nanoscale precipitates promotes quasi-continuous propagation of deformation bands in the entire strain-rate range. The grain refinement leads to a transition to relay-race propagation at high strain rates and static strain localization at low rates. The results are discussed from the viewpoint of competition between various dynamical modes of plastic deformation associated with collective dynamics of dislocations. Full article

As a kind of cost-efficient hydrogen storage materials with high hydrogen capacity and light weight, Mg-based alloys have attracted much attention. This review introduces an effective technique in producing bulk ultrafine-grained (UFG) Mg alloys and promoting its hydrogen storage property, namely, equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP). This paper briefly describes the technical principle of ECAP and reviews the research progress on hydrogen storage properties of ECAP-processed Mg alloys. Special attention is given to their hydrogen storage behaviors including hydrogen storage dynamics, capacity, and cycling stability. Finally, it analyzes the factors that affect the hydrogen storage properties of ECAP-processed Mg alloys, such as the grain sizes, lattice defects, catalysts, and textures introduced by ECAP process. Full article