Atomistic modeling of hardening in spinodally-decomposed Fe-Cr binary alloys

Suzudo, Tomoaki; Takamizawa, Hisashi; Nishiyama, Yutaka; Caro, A.*; Toyama, Takeshi*; Nagai, Yasuyoshi*

Journal of Nuclear Materials, 540, p.152306_1 - 152306_10, 2020/11

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnucmat.2020.152306

Spinodal decomposition in thermally aged Fe-Cr alloys leads to significant hardening, which is the direct cause of the so-called 475C-embrittlement. To illustrate how spinodal decomposition induces hardening by atomistic interactions, we conducted a series of numerical simulations as well as reference experiments. The numerical results indicated that the hardness scales linearly with the short-range order (SRO) parameter, while the experimental result reproduced this relationship within statistical error. Both seemingly suggest that neighboring Cr-Cr atomic pairs essentially cause hardening, because SRO is by definition uniquely dependent on the appearance probability of such pairs. A further numerical investigation supported this notion, as it suggests that the dominant cause of hardening is the pinning effect of dislocations passing over such Cr-Cr pairs.