Control of Cantor CoCrFeMnNi high-entropy alloy mechanical properties

The paper summarizes the research on the control of Cantor CoCrFeMnNi high-entropy alloy (HEA) mechanical properties. We studied the effects of alloying with aluminum, vanadium, manganese, titanium, silicon, carbon, and copper on the hardening of HEAs made by vacuum arc melting, laser melting, arc melting, drip casting, mechanical alloying with subsequent plasma sintering, gas sputtering followed by the shock wave and static compaction. It was shown that the addition of 2.5 % TiC and 5 % WC significantly improves the tensile strength, but reduces the elongation to failure. In the 4.4 – 155 µm grain size range, the tensile strength increases as the grain size decreases. The strength and yield limits for any grain size increase as the temperature decreases. Intensive plastic deformation forming nanoscale (~50 nm) grains significantly increases the tensile strength (up to 1,950 MPa) and hardness (up to 520 HV). The strength and ductility can be adjusted with subsequent isochronous and isothermal annealing. The formation of nanostructure phase states with shock compression, mechanical alloying, and subsequent spark plasma sintering significantly increase the tensile strength at room temperature while maintaining excellent plasticity (relative elongation ~28 %). We proposed electron-beam processing (EBP) to control the HEA mechanical properties. We analyzed the deformation curves for the HEA made by wire arc additive manufacturing after EBP at 10 – 30 J/cm² electron beam energy density and made some assumptions about the reasons for the strength and ductility decrease. We also compared the mechanical properties of Cantor alloys made by various processes and found the reasons for the spread of the strength and ductility values.

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