Conformação por spray da liga formadora de fase amorfa Fe66B30Nb4

Abstract

The goal of this doctoral thesis was to contribute to the technology of amorphous metals production with dimensions of the order of millimeters or centimeters through the process of spray forming for the ternary Fe66B30Nb4 alloy. First the alloy has been rapidly solidified by "melt-spinning" to produce ribbons and by its comparison with those data from the literature, confirm the adequacy of the procedures used. Then the alloy has been processed by spray forming with the changing of processing parameters for increasing the fraction of solid particles in the deposition. The characterization of both the overspray powders and the deposits have been performed by combination of X-ray diffratometry XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission (MET) with microanalyses by dispersion of X-ray energy (EDS) and also differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Mechanical properties were evaluated by testing the hardness and compression resistance. The formation of only 35% of amorphous volume fraction of particles in the size range of 5-20 μ m in diameter indicates that the heterogeneous nucleation have been present in the overspray powder solidification and therefore leading to an increasing of the critical cooling rate necessary to suppress the crystallization process. The deposition under high volume fraction of already fully solidified particles fraction observed in the peripheral area of the atomization cone was not enough to guarantee the formation of bulk amorphous parts which has been confirmed in the peripheral area with 0.5 mm in thickness of the deposit, where the formation of amorphous phase reached only 10.6%. Considering that the literature reported 1,5 mm thick fully amorphous sample, here, as in the case of powders, the heterogeneous nucleation has been present. The production of deposit with high amount of amorphous structure needs a spray forming equipment capable of a high ratio G/M and that the whole process can be performed under controlled inert atmosphere.