Property and thermal stability of in situ composite Cu-Cr alloy contact cable

The in situ composite Cu-Cr alloy, a new type of potential electric material that can be used for contact cables, is reported in this paper. The combination property and thermal stability of the in situ composite Cu-Cr alloy were investigated. Experimental results showed that the in situ composite Cu-Cr alloy has not only high room temperature properties, including ultimate tensile strength σb, elongation rate 5, relative conductivity σr, and combination property that is scaled by M index (σb2κr), but also excellent thermal stability of these properties. At room temperature, the combination property of in situ composite Cu-Cr could be up to 18.3 × 106 MPa2%, which is higher than those of commonly used copper contact cables all over the world. After being heated for 3 h at 500 °C, the combination property of the in situ composite Cu-Cr alloy only decreased 3%. In this paper, the relationship between thermal stability and strengthening mechanism of in situ composite alloy was analyzed.