Abstract
In present work, we attempt to produce rapidly solidified powder of a Nb-Al alloy by the Rotating Electrode Process(REP), and successfully obtain good powder whose scatter of aluminun concentration is relatively small. The as-REP powder has a uniformly distributed dendritic structure of the bcc phase stable at high temperatures. The powder was sintered by Hot Pressing at 50MPa and 1873K. It was confirmed by X-ray analysis and electron probe micro analysis(EPMA) that the sintered material has a fine structure consisting of Nb3Al and Nb solid solution. After heat treated at 1773K for 24h, compression tests were performed in the temperature range from 1273K to 1873K at an initial strain rate of 1.6×10-4s-1. Temperature dependence of 0.2% proof stress is found to be similar to that of previous literatures. From the results obtained, we can conclude that this process is very useful to fabricate a Nb3Al and Nb solid solution in-situ composite with a near net shape.
