Abstract
“Liquid metal embrittlement” (LME) describes reduction in ductility and strength of metals under the simultaneous action of tensile stress and the wetting liquid metals (LM). LME is encountered with many aggressor / victim combinations and in many fields. Among them are soldering / welding, LM assisted superplasticity, cracking of heat resistant alloys with minute quantities of low melting phases, nuclear areas and military applications, e.g. reactors with LM coolants used in Russian nuclear submarines and so called “non-lethal” weapons.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Joseph, B., Piscat, M., and Barbier, F. (1999) Liquid metal embrittlement: A state-of — the-art appraisal, Eur. Phys. J.AP 5, 19–31
Robertson, W. M. (1966) Propagation of a crack filled with liquid metals, Trans. AIME, 236, 1478–1486
Westwood, A. R. C., Preece, C. M., and Kamdar M. H. (1971) Brittle fracture in liquid metals, in H. Liebowitz (ed.), Fracture, v.3, Academ. Press, NY, pp. 589–636
Lynch, S. P., LME in an Al 6%Zn 3%Mg alloy (1981) Acta Metall., 29, 325–340;. (1988) Environmentally assisted cracking; overview of evidence for an adsorption induced localized slip process Acta Metall., 36, 2639-2661
Saruchev K. Yu. (1975) Ph.D. Thesis, Moscow State University, pp. 19
Glickman E. and Igoshev V. (1991) Kinetics and mechanism of LME in polycrystalline materials, STP, Inst. Microelectronics. Techn. and Mater., USSR AS, Moscow, pp. 50 (in Russian)
Glickman, E. E. and Goryunov Yu. V. (1977) Mechanism of Rhebinder effects in metallic systems, Proc. Moscow State Univ., Ser. Chemistry, 32, 36–47
Glickman, E., Gorynov, Y., Saruchev, K., and Demin, V. (1976) On the role of structure of the crystalliquid interphase in the manifestations of the Rhebinder effect in metals, Sov. Phys. Chem. Dokl. 227, 645–648
Glickman E., Gorynov Yu.(1978) Mechanism of embrittlement by liquid metals and other manifestations of the Rehbinder effects in metal systems, Sov. Mater. Sci., 4, 355–364
Glickman E., Gorynov Yu., and Demin V. (1985) The effect of intercrystalline internal adsorption of Bi in the interegranular fracture of Cu in liquid Bi and the mechanism of LME, Phys. Chem. Mech.. Surfaces, 2, 3041–3052
Glickman E., E., et al. (1973) Influence of intercrystalline internal adsorption on LME, Sov. Phys. J., 7, 7–13
Shchukin E., D. (1977) Environmentally induced lowering of surface energy and the mechanical behavior of solids, in R. Latanision and J. Fourie (eds.), Surface Effects in Crystal Plasticity, NATO ASI Series, Ser. E 317 Nordhoff, Leyden, pp. 701–736
Gorse, D., see in this volume
Soldatchenkova, L. S. (1976), Ph. D. Thesis, Moscow University, pp. 190
Glickman, E., Cherepanov A., and Tuzov, L. (1979) Kinetics of crack propagation and fracture of Cu under creep, Sov. Phys. Met. and Metallography, 47, 649–656
Glickman, E., Cherepanov A., and Tuzov, L. (1980), Durability of Cu in Bi-Pb melts under creep, Sov. Phys. J., 23, 364–374
Igoshev, V. (1987), Ph.D. Thesis, Moscow Alloy and Steel Institute, pp. 208
Glickman, E., Sarychev, K., Demin V., and Goryunov, Yu. (1976) Fracture kinetics and mechanism for Cu under deformation in surface-active melts, Communication II: Mechanism of subcritical crack growth, Sov. Phys. J., 5, 16–26
Glickman, E.,. Igoshev, V., and Braginsky, A.. (1985) On the dissolution condensation mechanism of LME: Interegranular fracture kinetics and acoustic emission in a-brass wetted with mercury, Phys. Chem. Mech. Surfaces, 10, 137–143
Glickman E. E., Molchanova, N. A., and Panin, V., E.. (1981) Durability and kinetics of fracture for Cu deformed in Hg, Sov. Phys. J., 3, 49–53
Glickman, E., Sarychev, K., Demin V., and Goryunov, Yu. (1976) Fracture kinetics and mechanism for Cu under deformation in surface-active melts, Communication IV: The LME macroscopic manifestations and micromechanism, Sov. Phys. J., 7, 22–29
Riedel, H. (1993) Fracture Mechanics, in R. W. Cahn et al. (eds.), Materials Science and Technology v.6, VCH Publ. NY, pp. 568–628
In these studies large statistics of micro-cracks (L(t) = 5-250 μm) was obtained by SEM inspection of the polished sections prepared from 1 mm diameter samples unloaded after various periods t under stress, the averaged length of 3–5 longest cracks was then presented as the L(t) dependence. The total number of the cracks inspected for Cu-(Bix Pb1-x) samples is about 3-104.
Glickman, E., Sarychev, K., Demin V., and Goryunov, Yu. (1976) Fracture kinetics and mechanism for Cu under deformation in surface-active melts, Communication I: Fracture kinetics, Sov. Phys. J., 5, 7–15.
Chadek, J. (1988) Creep in Metallic Materials, Academia Prague
Stevens R.. N. and Dutton, R. (1971) The propagation of Griffith cracks at high temperatures by mass transport processes, Mater. Sci. Eng., 8, 220–234
Sutton A. P. and Balluffi, R. W. (1996) Interfaces in Crystalline Materials, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Vook, R. W. (1966) Direct observations of LME in the solid copper-liquid bismuth system in A. R. C. Westwood and N. S. Stollolff (eds.) Environment-Sensitive Mechanical Behavior, Gordon and Breach, NY, 657–659
Su, Y. J., Wang, Y. B., and Chu, W. Y.(1998) Mechanism of LME for aluminum in Hg + 3 at.% Ga, in Proc. of the NACE Conf. Corrosion 98, paper No. 255, NACE, Houston
To illustrate how fast it can be: at T = 1/2 TM (TM is the melting point of a solid metal) the bulk diffusion coefficient in liquid metals DL ∼ 10-5 cm2/ s exceeds DGB the GB diffusivity in solid FCC metals by about 10 4 times [Kaur, I. and Gust, W. (1989) Fundamentals of Grain and Interphase Boundary Diffusion, Ziegler Press, Stuttgart]
Rostoker, W., McCaughey, J. M., and Markus, H. (1960) Embrittlement by Liquid Metals, Nostrand-Rheinhold, NY
Likhtman, V. I., Schukin, E. D., and Rebinder, P. A. (1962) Physicochemical Mechanics of Metals [in Russian], AS USSR, Moscow
Nikitin, V. I., (1967) Physicochemical Phenomena in the Interaction of Liquid and Solid Metals [in Russian], Atomizdat, Moscow
Popovich, V. V. and Dmukhovskaya, I. G. (1978) Rebinder Effect in the fracture of armco iron in liquid metals, Sov. Mater. Sci., 4, 365–370
Glickman E., Go, Y., and Ledovskaya, I. (1979) The kinetics of failure of Cu in the presence of liquid Bi with a chemical active addition of Sb, Sov. Mater. Sci. 6, 446–450.
Bonzel, H. P. (1990) Surface Diffusion in Metals, Landoldt-Bernstein, New Series, III/26, Springer, Berlin.
Kaur, I. and Gust, W. (1989) Fundamentals of Grain and Interphase Boundary Diffusion, Ziegler Press, Stuttgart
Just to illustrate how significant the effect can be, we estimated DAS for Cu-Bi system (with T= 573K and the eutectic TM3D = 543K) and arrived at: DAS ≈ 10 -4 cm2 / s. This is about 105 times larger than Ds at the same temperature [37]. Comparing now the atomic flux away from the crack tip caused by the surface diffusion JAS oc DAS hs (with hs ≈10-7 cm being the diffusion thickness of the surface, and δ ≈3 10-5 cm [7, 16, 21] to its liquid diffusion counterpart JL ∈ C∈L DL δ, we get: (JAS / JL) ∼1. This suggests that even with C∞L → 0, the surface diffusion can likely cause rather fast crack extension.
Glickman, E., Demin, V., Sarychev, K., and Goryunov, Yu. (1976) Fracture kinetics and mechanism for Cu under deformation in surface-active melts, Communication III: Crack initiation, Sov. Phys. J., 7, 17–25
Igoshev, V., I. (1997) Some critical experiments in support of the “dissolution-condensation ” model of LME, presentation at the Kammel-Gedeon CNRS-CEA Workshop “Materials for Hybrid Systems, Paris
Glickman, E., E. and Igoshev, V., I. LME as the crack kinetics phenomenon, will be published
Ashby, M. F., and Jones, D. R. (1991) Engineering Materials 1, Pergamon Press, Oxford
Ohr, S. M., (1986) Scripta Metal., 86, 1501–1505
Kraft, J. M. and Mulherin J. R. (1969) Tensile-ligament instability and the growth of stress-corrosion crack in high strength alloys, Trans, of ASM, 62, 64
Glickman, E., and Nathan, M.(1999) On the kinetic mechanism of grain boundary wetting in metals, J. Appl. Phys., 85, 3185–3191
Glickman, E., work in progress
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Glickman, E.E. (2000). Mechanism of Liquid Metal Embrittlement by Simple Experiments: From Atomistics to Life-Time. In: Lépinoux, J., Mazière, D., Pontikis, V., Saada, G. (eds) Multiscale Phenomena in Plasticity: From Experiments to Phenomenology, Modelling and Materials Engineering. NATO Science Series, vol 367. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4048-5_30
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4048-5_30
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-0-7923-6252-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-011-4048-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive