Instrumented mechanical alloying of a novel superalloy powder

Mechanical alloying is used to produce a variety of oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) alloys for very high temperature applications. Development of new mechanically alloyed materials, however, is limited by our current imperfect understanding of solid state alloying and a corresponding need for substantial numbers of empirical process studies. To expedite development of new mechanically alloyed materials, an instrumented attritor has been developed. This system is based on a Union Process 1-S unit, and can process up to 2.5 kg lots of ferrous or Ni-based powders. It is capable of monitoring electrical power input, torque, chamber temperature, coolant characteristics, and acoustic output as a function of time for runs lasting up to several days. In this study, variations in milling parameters were observed during mechanical alloying of an ODS variant of Alloy 803 (36 (w)/Fe-o, 35 (w)/Ni-o, 27 (w)/Cr-o with lesser amounts of Al, Ti, Si, Mn, and C) for times up to 96 hours. Observed parameter variations were also correlated with changes in the microhardness, morphology and size distribution of the milled powder. The results obtained from this work will be presented. The work was sponsored by the Office of Industrial Technologies, U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-FC07-O11D14255.