Structural evolution of Ni-20Cr alloy during ball milling of elemental powders

The ball milling (BM) of blended Ni and Cr elemental powders was carried out in a Simoloyer performing on high-energy scale mode at maximum production to obtain a nanostructured Ni-20Cr alloy. The phase transformations and structural changes occurring during mechanical alloying were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and optical microscopy (OM). A gradual solid solubility of Cr and the subsequent formation of crystalline metastable solid solutions described in terms of the Avrami-Erofe'ev kinetics model were calculated. The XRD analysis of the structure indicates that cumulative lattice strain contributes to the driving force for solid solution between Ni and Cr during BM. Microstructure evolution has shown, additionally to the lamellar length refinement commonly observed, the folding of lamellae in the final processing stage. OM observations revealed that the lamellar spacing of Ni rich zones reaches a steady value near 500 nm and almost disappears after 30 h of milling.