Mechanical Studies Of Intermetallic Nickel Aluminide (Ni4Al) for Automotive Tyres

Abstract

Intermetallic Nickel Aluminides (Ni4Al) was synthesized and characterized to determine
the suitability of this material in the automotive industry. The purpose is to produce vehicles which are
lighter, more fuel efficient and cause less pollution. One key technical design strategy for improving
vehicles efficiency is the light weighting and their tyre Hub. Attractive properties of Ni4Al including
low density (~ 6g/cm3
) resulting lightweight, high oxidation and corrosion resistance, combined with
their ability to retain strength and stiffness at elevated temperatures lead to its selection as a potential
candidate material. The prime focus will be on to obtain the mechanical properties such as hardness
which was tested using Vickers Micro hardness Tester. Microstructural properties of these alloys were
examined using optical microscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). It confirms grain
boundaries with a large network in ordered L12 Ni4Al phase visible and it was known as dendrites arm.
SEM equipped with EDX used to do compositional analysis. The EDX analysis shows the ratio of Ni
to Al is close to 4:1 respectively. Heat treatment (annealing) and Tafel extrapolation tests were used
out for thermal and corrosion properties of the intermetallic nickel aluminides respectively. There is an
increase of 26.36% for the annealed Ni4Al sample results that associate with dendrites structure which
decayed very slightly with the rise of annealing temperature.