Thermo-mechanical Processing in a Synchrotron Beam - from Simple Metals to Multiphase Alloys and Intermetallics

The mechanical properties of a metallic product depend strongly on both phase composition and microstructure of a polycrystalline product and large development efforts for the design of novel materials deal with these issues. Besides the physical parameters, the artwork is to perform the right thermo-mechanical processing, which for highly designed materials can be very sophisticated. Therefore, thermo-mechanical simulators are widely used in industry and laboratories (Figure 1). They not only allow to obtain experimental results for fundamental knowledge, understanding and design of a new bulk material but also the study of very particular and applied cases. Conventional methods of materials characterization are ex-situ and conducted following time-consuming postmortem preparation. For example, a metal is processed under realistic or model conditions at high temperature, with a defined time and stress profile and then quenched to freeze the structure from that particular point in parameter space. To access its bulk properties, this specimen is then cut, polished and examined by microscopy or conventional X-ray diffraction in near-surface region. In order to obtain the material’s behavior along several time steps of the