Some properties of Al-20 w/oU alloy in rolled conditions

The purpose of the present work was to investigate the effects of increasing quantities of hard brittle intermetallics on the rollability and hardness of alloys containing up to 20 w/o U with ternary additions of zirconium, silicon, tin and titanium. The metallographic, X ray and hardness changes associated with the cold rolling have been described. The alloys possessed good rolling properties. The defect of cracking, however, developed slightly with 20 w/o alloy, which was absent with the alloys containing the ternary additional elements. During the later stages of cold rolling, some of them underwent a considerably greater softening. Qualitative explanations have been proposed to account for the observation on rolling softening. Softening occurred as a result of a recovery process in the aluminum phase; the intensified, localised deformation produced by turbulent plastic flow accounted for the softening effect in the aluminum component surrounding individual intermetallic compounds. (author)