Analysis of precipitates in ultrafine-grained metallic materials

In the present work, new possibilities of the X-ray diffraction for investigations of the phase composition, size, shape and volume fraction of particles in ultrafine-grained ferritic/martensitic steel and the Cu-Cr-Zr alloy have been demonstrated. For the first time, the method of X-ray diffraction in the transmission mode was used to identify particles with a volume fraction of less than one percent in the ultrafine-grained materials studied. The small-angle X-ray scattering method was used to estimate the size and shape of dispersed particles. Specific features of the ultrafine-grained structure determined by the X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy studies were used for estimation of dispersion hardening in the samples obtained by equal-channel angular pressing in comparison with the samples subjected to standard treatment.