Papers by Author: Olga A. Sokolova

Abstract: The influence of heat treatment on the amplitude dependence of internal friction in Fe - 11 at. % Al alloys with carbon contents in the range 0.005 - 0.2 at. % has been studied using an inverted torsion pendulum in the temperature range 300 – 950 K and a vibrating reed apparatus at room temperature. The specimens were annealed at 1273 K in vacuum and cooled down with different cooling rates in order to obtain different degrees of order. It was found that ordering is hardly avoidable in Fe - Al alloys with Al contents > 11 at. %. Ordered alloys are characterised by lower damping capacity due to higher coercivity caused by additional pinning of magnetic domain walls by antiphase boundaries. X-ray diffraction investigations indicate that water-cooling suppresses ordering in Fe - 11 at. % Al alloys while cooling in air or in furnace provokes D03–type ordering. Slowly cooled specimens are characterised by higher damping capacity due to lower coercivity than water cooled or plastically deformed specimens. The amplitude dependent magneto-mechanical damping was determined as the difference between amplitude dependent damping without and with saturating magnetic field (~ 20 kA/m). Magneto-mechanical damping was found to be proportional to the strain where the amplitude dependent damping is maximum and reciprocal to the coercivity and saturation polarisation. Cold rolling increases the coercivity and therefore decreases the magneto-mechanical damping. An increase of the grain size in the investigated samples by heat treatment leads to a qualitatively expected decrease of coercivity and therefore to an increase of magneto-mechanical damping.

Abstract: Carbon-containing Fe - Si and Fe - Si - Al alloys were studied with respect to the carbonrelated Snoek-type and Zener relaxation using different mechanical spectroscopy techniques. In all alloys the temperature-dependent profile of the Snoek peak, relative to that in pure iron, is modified on its high-temperature side by the substitutional atoms. At least two components, an Fe - C - Fe (which correspond to C atom jumps (diffusion) in areas where it is surrounded by Fe atoms only) and Fe - C - Me peaks, where Me = Si, Al, can be distinguished in the Snoek-peak profile. In both binary Fe - Al and Fe - Si and ternary Fe - Si - Al alloys, a higher annealing temperature prior to quenching leads to an increase in the Fe - C - Fe and a decrease in the Fe - C - Me component of the Snoek peak. Heating to 1173K and above often lowers the peak height due to thermal vacancies. Low-temperature (<670K) ageing of quenched Fe - Si - Al and Fe – Si specimens reduces both the Fe – C - Fe and Fe – C – Al / Si peaks. Ageing at T > 670 K changes the temperature- as well as the amplitude-dependent parts of internal friction due to a redistribution of carbon between solid solution and dislocations. Both the Snoek-type peak height and the dislocation mobility – as can be concluded from the slope of the amplitude-dependent internal friction – increase, and a new peak appears at temperatures higher than that of the Snoek peak, which probably is a Snoek-Köster peak resulting from the motion of weakly pinned dislocations. A Zener peak appears if the concentration of substitutional atoms is > 6 at. %. The Zener peak relaxation strength is much lower in ternary alloys than in the binary ones probably due to mutual compensation of elastic distortions in presence of Al and Si atoms which are bigger and smaller, respectively, than Fe atoms.