Design of a novel Cu-Cr-X alloy with high strength and high electrical conductivity based on mechanical learning

Micro-alloying and thermo-mechanical treatments are crucial to the further development of high-strength and high-conductivity Cu-Cr-X alloys. In this study, a high accuracy ultimate tensile strength and electrical conductivity prediction model was obtained by training the BP neural networks with dif...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yunqing Zhu, Yicheng Cao, Lijun Peng, Qian Yu, Zhen Yang, Zengde Li, Junsheng Wu, Haofeng Xie
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2025-02-01
Series:Materials & Design
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026412752500019X
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Micro-alloying and thermo-mechanical treatments are crucial to the further development of high-strength and high-conductivity Cu-Cr-X alloys. In this study, a high accuracy ultimate tensile strength and electrical conductivity prediction model was obtained by training the BP neural networks with different compositions and processing experimental data. The Cu-Cr-Zr-Mg-Ti alloy with superior properties was optimally designed by genetic algorithm from the massive solutions, which the experimental tensile strength and conductivity reached 668 MPa and 71.5 %IACS, respectively. The atom probe tomography results show that Zr, Mg, and Ti simultaneously segregated in the Cr-rich phase after aging at 440 °C for 480 h, which significantly improves the stability of the precipitated Cr phase and inhibited the Cr-rich phase transition from fcc to bcc structure. With the increase of aging temperature, the bcc structure Cr phase gradually replaces the fine fcc-Cr phase and exhibited a higher coarsening rate. It was found that the addition of Zr tends to nucleation at the interface of the K-S orientation relationship (OR) bcc-Cr phases. The Cu5Zr phase maintains the (1¯13)Cu5Zr//(01¯1)Cr and [011]Cu5Zr//[111]Cr ORs with the bcc structure Cr precipitates. The evolution of microstructure and properties exhibited a narrow aging process region of 80 % cold-rolled Cu-Cr-Zr-Mg-Ti alloy, while the consistent results from prediction model provide a favorable guidance for process designs. The outstanding performance enhancement and rapid prediction of process scopes leads us to recognise that the great potential of multi-objective machine-learning-aid design in the complex composition and process problems.
ISSN:0264-1275