Russian scientists have increased the hardness of an aluminum alloy for aviation and marine industries by 237% through the addition of significant amounts of zirconium nitride, which also greatly improved the material’s elasticity and strength. TASS reported this, citing the press service of the NITU MISIS Research Center for Structural Ceramic Nanomaterials.
“Various reinforcing additives, including zirconium nitride, are used to enhance the properties of aluminum alloys. By adjusting the amount of the additive, the material’s parameters can be regulated: relative density, mechanical, and thermophysical properties. According to Veronica Suvorova, a researcher at the NITU MISIS, each composite can be used in advanced engineering fields.
Scientists have not only developed a new alloy, but also an innovative approach to its production. This approach allows the creation of composite materials based on aluminum alloys for the aviation and marine industries, which outperform their predecessors in terms of hardness, elasticity, strength, and other mechanical characteristics. The use of powder metallurgy methods in their production further underscores the cutting-edge nature of this research.
In these methods, a mixture of initial materials, including aluminum alloy, magnesium, and silicon particles, as well as zirconium nitride powder, is ground using a planetary ball mill and then processed using spark plasma sintering techniques. This results in forming a composite material in which the reinforcing zirconium nitride particles are evenly distributed throughout the aluminum alloy matrix.
By combining these methods, scientists synthesized several composites with different zirconium nitride content. Subsequent studies of their properties showed that adding 30% zirconium nitride to the aluminum alloy significantly improved the material’s mechanical properties, including its hardness by 237%, elasticity modulus by 56%, and compressive strength by 183%.
Additionally, researchers found that adding zirconium nitride makes the final composite material more suitable for “ink” for 3D printing systems. In the future, this will allow high-strength structures to be printed from such composites, greatly expanding their practical applicability, the researchers concluded.
