Using electric current to surpass the microstructure breakup limit
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Published version
Author(s)
Qin, R
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The elongated droplets and grains can break up into smaller ones. This process is driven by the interfacial free energy minimization, which gives rise to a breakup limit. We demonstrated in this work that the breakup limit can be overpassed drastically by using electric current to interfere. Electric current free energy is dependent on the microstructure configuration. The breakup causes the electric current free energy to reduce in some cases. This compensates the increment of interfacial free energy during breaking up and enables the processing to achieve finer microstructure. With engineering practical electric current parameters, our calculation revealed a significant increment of the obtainable number of particles, showing electric current a powerful microstructure refinement technology. The calculation is validated by our experiments on the breakup of Fe3C-plates in Fe matrix. Furthermore, there is a parameter range that electric current can drive spherical particles to split into smaller ones.
Date Issued
2017-01-25
Date Acceptance
2016-12-19
Citation
Scientific Reports, 2017, 7
ISSN
2045-2322
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Journal / Book Title
Scientific Reports
Volume
7
Copyright Statement
© 2017 The Authors.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
License URL
Sponsor
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (E
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (E
Grant Number
EP/J011460/1
EP/L00030X/1
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
4151