PrecipitationHardeningofMetalAlloys-NISTPage.pdfVIP

Precipitation Hardening of Metal Alloys Precipitation hardening, or age hardening, provides to look; following Merica, new age-hardening alloys one of the most widely used mechanisms for the came in a flood.” strengthening of metal alloys. The fundamental under- The importance of the theoretical suggestion for the standing and basis for this technique was established in development of new alloys is clear from the historical early work at the U. S. Bureau of Standards on an alloy record [5]. At the end of the 19th century, cast iron was known as Duralumin [1,2]. Duralumin is an aluminum the only important commercial alloy not already known alloy containing copper and magnesium with small to western technology at the time of the Romans. When amounts of iron and silicon. In an attempt to understand age hardening of aluminum was discovered accidentally the dramatic strengthening of this alloy, Paul D. Merica by Wilm [6], during the years 1903-1911, it quickly and his coworkers studied both the effect of various heat became an important commercial alloy under the trade treatments on the hardness of the alloy and the influence name Duralumin. of chemical composition on the hardness. Among the The two NBS studies published in 1919 explored both most significant of their findings was the observation the application of phase diagrams to the phenomenon that the solubility of CuAl2 in aluminum increased with and the consequences of various heat treatments on the increasing temperature. Although the specific phases subsequent time evolution of mechanical properties. responsible for the hardening turned out to be too small The latter study tentatively concluded that age harden- to be observed directly, opti