Volume 35, Issue 3 -

The long-lasting phosphorescent glass with the composition of ZnO–P 2 O 5 –SiO 2 : Tb 3+ was prepared by melt-quenched method. After irradiation by 254 nm light, a visible greenish light can be observed with the naked eyes, in the dark for up to 9 h after removal of the activating light. The luminescent properties of ZnO–P 2 O 5 –SiO 2 : Tb 3+ were studied by fluorescence spectra, afterglow spectra and thermoluminescence spectra. The results show that the luminescent properties of the glasses become better with the increase of ZnO contents. The luminescent properties of glasses increase with the increase of Tb 3+ contents. When 2% of ZnO is replaced by 2% of RO (RO=CaO, SrO, BaO), the luminescent property of glasses become worse in the order of CaO, SrO, BaO. The higher the contents of RO (RO=CaO, SrO, BaO) are, the worse the luminescent properties of the glasses become.

In this study, the effects of equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) on high-cycle fatigue and fatigue surface morphology of AA7075 have been investigated at a constant temperature (483 K) and the “C” route for four passes at ECAP process. ECAPed and as-received specimens were tested by four-point bending fatigue device. Fatigue tests were carried out by using 100, 120 and 140 MPa strength values. ECAPed specimens were characterized for each pass with optical microscope (OM), scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy-dispersive spectroscope (EDS), transmission electron microscope (TEM), selected area electron diffraction (SAED) and hardness measurements. Fracture surfaces of the specimens were also characterized with SEM. The results show that the highest hardness values (137 HV) and the best fatigue life (5.4 × 10 7 for 100 MPa) were measured in ECAPed four-pass sample. For this reason hardness values and fatigue life were increased with increasing number of severe plastic deformation (SPD) process.

The joining of dissimilar metals is one of the most essential necessities of industries. Manufacturing by the joint of alloy steel and normal carbon steel is used in production, because it decreases raw material cost. The friction welding process parameters such as friction pressure, friction time, upset pressure, upset time and rotating speed play the major roles in determining the strength and microstructure of the joints. In this study, response surface methodology (RSM), which is a well-known design of experiments approach, is used for modeling the mathematical relation between the responses (tensile strength and maximum temperature), and the friction welding parameters with minimum number of experiments. The results show that RSM is an effective method for this type of problems for developing models and prediction.

Commonly used small creep specimen types, such as ring and impression creep specimens, are capable of providing minimum creep strain rate data from small volumes of material. However, these test types are unable to provide the creep rupture data. In this paper the recently developed two-bar specimen type, which can be used to obtain minimum creep strain rate and creep rupture creep data from small volumes of material, is described. Conversion relationships are used to convert (i) the applied load to the equivalent uniaxial stress, and (ii) the load line deformation rate to the equivalent uniaxial creep strain rate. The effects of the specimen dimension ratios on the conversion factors are also discussed in this paper. This paper also shows comparisons between two-bar specimen creep test data and the corresponding uniaxial creep test data, for grade P91 steel at 650°C.

Electrical conductivity of molten slags is one of the most important physicochemical properties and it also has a close relationship to the structure of slag. This article focused on the basic slag system CaO-MgO-Al 2 O 3 -SiO 2 and made estimations for electrical conductivity. Ion-oxygen parameter was selected to describe the relationship between electrical conductivity with compositions. Moreover, the interaction between composition and temperature was embodied in the final model formula. It was shown that increasing CaO and MgO contents enhanced the ability for electric conduction. Moreover, with a higher temperature, the change of electrical conductivity with ion-oxygen parameter was more remarkable. This model gives reasonable prediction of the electrical conductivity for the slags studied with the mean deviation of 14.3%. Thus, this model would provide a feasible tool for industry to predict and optimize the electrical conductivity of slag system.

The accuracies of molten slag viscosity fitting and low-temperature extrapolation were compared between four two-variable models: Arrhenius, Weymann–Frenkel (WF), and Vogel–Fulcher–Tammann (VFT) and Mauro, Yue, Ellison, Gupta and Allan (MYEGA) models with constant pre-exponential parameter, based on a molten slag viscosity database consisting of over 800 compositions and 5,000 measurements. It is found that over wide ranges of pre-exponential parameter, the VFT and MYEGA models have lower viscosity fitting errors and much higher low-temperature viscosity extrapolation accuracies than Arrhenius and WF models. The pre-exponential parameter values of –2.8 for VFT and –2.3 for MYEGA are recommended.

The formation of internal cracks in continuous casting slabs is mainly attributed to the strain status and microsegregation near the solidifying front of the slabs. By analyzing the internal cracks of medium carbon microalloy steel, the obtained conclusions are that C, P, S, etc. enrich in dendrites and exist in grain boundaries, but these are just the internal causes, and the root cracking causes the tensile stress of solidification front. When the slab passes through the straightening segments, the liquid core thickness is large, and the liquid steel in the space of columnar crystals is not completely frozen. Therefore, the reduction effect of rollers results in the strain of solidification front exceeding the critical value. However, the corresponding strain in the arc and horizontal segments does not exceed this critical value, so the solidification front in the straightening segments would be much easy to crack. The statistics analysis shows that after soft reduction and straightening process are separately carried out, the occurrence rate of intermediate cracks is reduced by 41.3%.

The effects of sodium citrate on ammonium sulfate recycled leaching of low-grade zinc oxide ores were studied. By applying various kinds of detection and analysis techniques such as chemical composition analysis, chemical phase method, scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive spectrum (SEM/EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier-transforming infrared spectrum (FT-IR), zinc raw ore, its leaching slag and the functional mechanism of sodium citrate were investigated. Based on a comprehensive analysis, it can be concluded that in contrast to hemimorphite (Zn 4 Si 2 O 7 (OH) 2 · H 2 O), amorphous smithsonite (ZnCO 3 ) and zinc silicate (Zn 2 SiO 4 ) prove to be refractory phases under ammonium sulfate leaching, while sodium citrate has a better chelating action with the refractory phases, resulting in a higher zinc leaching rate. Under conditions of [NH 3 ]/[NH 3 ] T molar ratio being 0.5, [NH 3 ] T being 7.5 mol/L, [Na 3 C 6 H 5 O 7 ] being 0.2 mol/L, S/L ratio being 1:5, temperature being 303 K, holding time being 1 h in each of the two stages, and stirring rate being 300 rpm, the leaching rate of zinc reached 93.4%. In this article, sulfate ammonium recycled technology also reveals its unique advantage in processing low-grade zinc oxide ores accompanied by high silicon and high alkaline gangue.

Creep continuum damage finite element (FE) analyses were performed for P91 steel pipe containing local wall thinning (LWT) defect subjected to monotonic internal pressure, monotonic bending moment and combined internal pressure and bending moment by orthogonal experimental design method. The creep damage lives of pipe containing LWT defect under different load conditions were obtained. Then, the creep damage life formulas were regressed based on the creep damage life results from FE method. At the same time a skeletal point rupture stress was found and used for life prediction which was compared with creep damage lives obtained by continuum damage analyses. From the results, the failure lives of pipe containing LWT defect can be obtained accurately by using skeletal point rupture stress method. Finally, the influence of LWT defect geometry was analysed, which indicated that relative defect depth was the most significant factor for creep damage lives of pipe containing LWT defect.

True stress and true strain values obtained from isothermal compression tests over a wide temperature range from 1,073 to 1,323 K and a strain rate range from 0.001 to 1 s –1 were employed to establish the constitutive equations based on Johnson Cook, modified Zerilli–Armstrong (ZA) and strain-compensated Arrhenius-type models, respectively, to predict the high-temperature flow behavior of Ti–6Al–4V alloy in α + β phase. Furthermore, a comparative study has been made on the capability of the three models to represent the elevated temperature flow behavior of Ti–6Al–4V alloy. Suitability of the three models was evaluated by comparing both the correlation coefficient R and the average absolute relative error (AARE). The results showed that the Johnson Cook model is inadequate to provide good description of flow behavior of Ti–6Al–4V alloy in α + β phase domain, while the predicted values of modified ZA model and the strain-compensated Arrhenius-type model could agree well with the experimental values except under some deformation conditions. Meanwhile, the modified ZA model could track the deformation behavior more accurately than other model throughout the entire temperature and strain rate range.

The carbothermic reduction experiments were carried out for titanium-bearing blast furnace slag in Panzhihua Iron and Steel Company in argon atmosphere at high temperatures. The effects of reduction temperature, isothermal treatment time and carbon content on the formation of TiC were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). The XRD pattern results showed that MgAl 2 O 4 phase disappeared and the main phase of the reduced sample was TiC when the reduction temperature was higher than 1,773 K. The SEM pictures showed that the reduction rate of the titanium-bearing blast furnace slag could be increased by enhancing the temperature and the C content (carbon ratio ≤1.0). Furthermore, it was also found that TiC had the tendency of concentrating around the iron. The effects of additives such as Fe and CaCl 2 on the formation of TiC were also studied in the present study.

Nanostructured oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) steels with nominal compositions (wt%): Fe-12Cr-2W-0.3Ti-0.3Y 2 O 3 were produced by mechanical alloying and hot isostatic pressing. The microstructure was characterized by means of electron microscopy (EBSD, TEM and HRTEM) and the hardness and the tensile properties at different temperatures were measured. The results showed that the ultimate tensile strength of the fabricated 12Cr-ODS steel reached nearly 1,100 MPa at room temperature and maintained around 340 MPa at 700°C. Nano-oxide particles with size ranging from several nm to 30 nm and the number density was 3.6 × 10 20 /m 3 were observed by TEM. Following heat treatment, including normalizing at 1,100°C for 1 h and tempering at 750°C for 2 h, the average grain size was a little decreased. The number of nano-oxide particles increased and the number density was 8.9 × 10 20 /m 3 . Specimens showed much higher ductility and there was a slight increase of ultimate tensile strength and Vickers hardness at the same time.

The hot deformation characteristics of nickel-based alloy Nimonic 80A were investigated by isothermal compression tests conducted in the temperature range of 1,000–1,200°C and the strain rate range of 0.01—5 s –1 on a Gleeble-1500 thermomechanical simulator. In order to establish the constitutive models for dynamic recrystallization (DRX) behavior and flow stress of Nimonic 80A, the material constants α , n and DRX activation energy Q in the constitutive models were calculated by the regression analysis of the experimental data. The dependences of initial stress, saturation stress, steady-state stress, dynamic recovery (DRV) parameter, peak strain, critical strain and DRX grain size on deformation parameters were obtained. Then, the Avrami equation including the critical strain for DRX and the peak strain as a function of strain was established to describe the DRX volume fraction. Finally, the constitutive model for flow stress of Nimonic 80A was developed in DRV region and DRX region, respectively. The flow stress values predicted by the constitutive model are in good agreement with the experimental ones, which indicates that the constitutive model can give an accurate estimate for the flow stress of Nimonic 80A under the deformation conditions.