Nanostructure characterization of mechanical alloyed and consolidated iron alloys

High-energy ball milling (which is readily adoptable to commercial application) was used to develop sufficient quantities of nanostructured material to produce compacts capable of being measured for macroscopic properties. Characterization of the ball-milled powders show that grain boundary properties play a significant role in the overall properties of the milled powder. Nearly full-dense compacts were produced by hot-pressing. Characterization of the strength properties of these compacts show that there was little influence of hardness, density, or alloy composition on the failure properties. The range of failure stress was large and when fitted to a Weibull distribution suggest that failure was the result of flaws or cracks resulting from the hot-pressing. Hardness data, commonly used to evaluate the strength of nanostructured materials: showed no correlation to tensile strength, but correlated highly to compression maximum stress. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science S.A.