On the nature of discontinuous precipitation in beryllium bronze

An attempt was made to analyze the nature of discontinuous precipitation in Cu-Be alloys using the concepts of electron theories of condensed state. It was shown that discontinuous precipitation in beryllium bronze is caused by Be adsorption along the grain boundaries and rearrangement of electron structure in Be atom environment with increase of electron localization degree. The removal of primary Be adsorption along the grain boundaries (by introduction of surface-active Mg addition) or decrease of electron localization degree (by titanium addition) suppresses the discontinuous precipitation; increase of electron localization degree in α-phase by phosphorous introduction accelerates the discontinuous precipitation