Precipitation hardening behavior of dilute binary Al-Yb alloy

The precipitation hardening behavior in dilute Al-Yb alloys upon annealing at different temperatures was investigated to shed light on the mechanism of micro-alloying element in aluminum alloys. When aging at different temperatures, the samples showed their corresponding peak hardness in the range of 400-416 MPa due to the precipitation of Al3Yb with L12 crystal structure. The coarsening kinetics of the Al3Yb precipitates obeyed the LSW theory, which indicated that the coarsening process was controlled by the diffusion of Yb. The coherence between Al3Yb particles and matrix was maintained until the particle size reached 11 nm. When the particle size increased to about 2 nm, the shearing mechanism started to change to Orowan mechanism.