Kirill Akimov, a TSU postgraduate student, is improving the strength of composite materials based on intermetallic Ni3Al (nickel aluminide) and intermetallic alloys for the operation of materials at temperatures above 1,000°C. This is in demand in industry where operating temperatures are very high: for the production of parts for turbochargers and internal combustion engines, turbine blades for jet engines, heat exchangers, microreactors, and other components.
The research is being conducted by Kirill Akimov, a postgraduate student in the Department of Strength and Design of the TSU Faculty of Physics and Technology. His supervisor is Sergey Kulkov, TSU Professor, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.
- As a rule, scientific groups, including in China, describe the properties of the material at operating temperatures up to 1,000°C. But already in one of the technological options, we were able to raise the strength value by 1.5 times at higher temperatures, which indicates the prospects for further research, - said Kirill Akimov. - This property is needed in many areas. For example, in the turbines of an aircraft, there is a huge temperature, the blades are spinning, the material heats up, and deformation occurs, destroying structure. And we need the material to withstand all loads at a high temperature and last long enough.
The researcher uses a powder mixture of nickel and aluminum and heats it under high pressure in a mold reactor. He did not use free combustion so that the finished material did not have high porosity, and the test samples already obtained by him have almost zero porosity. Also, the chosen method will reduce the synthesis time of the material and the cost of its production.
- We want to improve the properties of the material so that it can work at high loads and temperatures up to and above 1,000 ° C. Cold and hot rolling are good known thermomechanical methods of material processing. But in this case, they are not applicable because nickel aluminide has a sufficiently high brittleness and low plasticity, - explained Kirill Akimov. - Our method is a high-temperature synthesis of an intermetallic compound with the application of pressure at its formation when the material begins to crystallize after a thermal explosion of a powder mixture of initial elements.
The young scientist will experimentally study the properties of the sample and evaluate the possibility of increasing the tensile and compressive strength of the material over a wide temperature range. Also, he will describe how the sample is influenced by various time and thermal-power parameters at the stage of material synthesis - the pressure value, the delay time for turning on the press, and others.
The result of the work will be the production of samples of intermetallic alloys and composite materials with increased strength properties in a wide range of test temperatures by synthesis under pressure.
