18/03/2014
On March 18th, CNPEM received Professor Sudarsanam Suresh Babu, from the University of Tennessee – USA. On his experiments on power plant applications, the XTMS Experimental Station of LNNano/LNLS was essential to stretch samples made out of alloys at different temperatures.
The Professor arrived at LNNano with two students, one from the Ohio State University and another from the University of Tennessee. Prof. Babu will stay for one week and the students will leave on March 27th.
Check out more information about the XTMS Experimental Station here.
Interview with Prof. Sudarsanam Suresh Babu:
About the project:
In power plants applications galling and wear resistance surfaces are needed for valve bodies. These surfaces are usuallymade up of Cobalt alloys that show strain induced transformation. However, there is a need to replace these Co-based alloys with Fe-based alloys. But these iron alloys do not perform well. So we are studying fundamentals of the phase stability in these two alloy systems under plastic deformation. Theseconditions simulate sliding wear conditions typical of valve bodies.
In our experiments at LNNano-LNLS, we are stretching samples made out of these alloys at different temperatures using the state of the art thermo-mechanical simulator. While we stretch these alloys, we simultaneously acquire diffraction information. With this data, we should be able to understand the physical mechanisms of strain induced martensitic transformation in these alloys. This is part of the Ryan Smith (PhD student) research project.
We have already collected crucial information which provides insight into these materials and will be published as a part of his thesis. Following Ryan’s work, another PhD student, Ben Shassere, is interested in understanding the role of carbides on similar phase transformations.
Why LNNano-LNLS?
We have lots of places where we can do synchrotron measurements, even in the US. The advantage here is the state of the art thermo-mechanical simulator, which is embedded within a diffraction beamline. Similar simulators are very well used in metallurgy and welding industries and academia. However, most of the time we have studied phase transformation indirectly, because no beam line in the world has a setup as the one here at LNNano.
The beam line with planned increase in energy and photon flux at the new LNLS synchrotron source, Sirius, will become a center for in-situ diffraction studies of materials processing. Thats why we come here. In addition, we have great scientific and technical staff who understands the photon scattering, electron microscopy, as well as, materials science. This is indeed a great collaboration.