Nickel aluminides systems

Intermetallics also represent an ideal system for study of shock-induced solid state chemical synthesis processes. The materials are technologically important such that a large body of literature on their properties is available. Aluminides are a well known class of intermetallics, and nickel aluminides are of particular interest. Reactants of nickel and aluminum give a mixture with powders of significantly different shock impedances, which should lead to large differential particle velocities at constant pressure. Such localized motion should act to mix the reactants. The mixture also involves a low shock viscosity, deformable material, aluminum, with a harder, high shock viscosity material, nickel, which will not flow as well as the aluminum. 

The shock-modified composite nickel-aluminide particles showed behavior in the DTA experiment qualitatively different from that of the mixed-powder system. The composite particles showed essentially the same behavior as the starting mixture. As shown in Fig. 8.5 no preinitiation event was observed, and temperatures for endothermic and exothermic events corresponded with the unshocked powder. The observations of a preinitiation event in the shock-modified mixed powders, the lack of such an event in the composite powders, and EDX (electron dispersive x-ray analysis) observations of substantial mixing of shock-modified powders as shown in Fig. 8.6 clearly show the first-order influence of mixing in shock-induced solid state chemistry. 

Table 3.2. Gibbs free energy of formation of nickel aluminides (J cm 3) and the first phase to grow in reaction couples of the Ni-Al binary system at 350°C89... 

Table 3.3. Standard enthalphies (heats) of formation of nickel aluminides and their effective heats of formation calculated for the effective concentration at the interface corresponding to the composition (3.5 at.% Ni, 96.5 at.% Al) of the eutectic with the lowest melting point in the Ni-Al binary system.261 For all the intermetallic compounds, the limiting element is nickel...

---