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Development of Nickel-Rich Nickel–Titanium–Hafnium Alloys for Tribological Applications

  • Special Issue: A Tribute to Prof. Dr. Gunther Eggeler, Invited Paper
  • Published:
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Abstract

Nickel-rich (54–56 at.% Ni) NiTi-based alloys have gained increased attention for their high hardness, corrosion resistance, strength, and wear resistance, leading to their development for high-performance bearings and other wear applications. An investigation of a broader compositional range of NiTiHf alloys, in terms of Ni and Hf content, is presented in this study. Their Vickers micro-hardness, 3 ball-on-rod rolling contact fatigue, and compression performances are benchmarked against early compositions identified for bearing applications, e.g., Ni55Ti45 and Ni54Ti45Hf1. The results show that by varying heat treatments and alloy composition, certain NiTiHf alloys can exhibit long life (~ 107 cycles) at 10–20% greater contact stress levels (up to 2.2–2.4 GPa), together with up to 20% greater hardness (up to 770 HV) and 30% larger compressive yield strengths (up to 3.4 GPa) than the original bearing compositions. These improvements are attributed to the ability to develop alloys with high-volume fractions of fine precipitate phases. Interestingly, a variety of combinations of different precipitate strengthening phases, depending on alloy composition and heat treatment, were able to achieve improvements relative to Ni55Ti45 and Ni54Ti45Hf1, demonstrating the versatility of the NiTiHf system.

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Acknowledgements

This work was conducted within the National Science Foundation (NSF) I/UCRC Center for Advanced Non-Ferrous Structural Alloys (CANFSA), which is a joint industry–university center between the Colorado School of Mines and Iowa State University. Additional financial support was provided for this work through the NASA Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program (TACP), Transformational Tools & Technologies Project under the guidance of Dr. Othmane Benafan, technical lead for shape memory alloys. Dr. Benafan is also thanked for providing the Ni55Ti45 compression data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mechanical Engineering Department, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, 80401, USA

    Sean H. Mills, Behnam Amin-Ahmadi & Aaron P. Stebner

  2. Materials and Structures Division, NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH, 44135, USA

    Ronald D. Noebe & Christopher Dellacorte

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  1. Sean H. Mills
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  2. Ronald D. Noebe
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  3. Christopher Dellacorte
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  4. Behnam Amin-Ahmadi
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  5. Aaron P. Stebner
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Correspondence to Aaron P. Stebner.

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This invited article is part of a special issue of Shape Memory and Superelasticity to honor Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gunther Eggeler. This special issue was organized by Prof. Hüseyin Sehitoglu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hans Jürgen Maier, Leibniz Universität Hannover.

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Mills, S.H., Noebe, R.D., Dellacorte, C. et al. Development of Nickel-Rich Nickel–Titanium–Hafnium Alloys for Tribological Applications. Shap. Mem. Superelasticity 6, 311–322 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40830-020-00296-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40830-020-00296-w

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