Correlation of magnetic and mechanical properties with microstructure in Fe/Co/2-3 pct V alloys

Remendur is an alloy of approximately equal proportions of iron and cobalt with two to four wt pct vanadium. In previous articles by the authors, various aspects of the ternary phase equilibrium and the influence of processing variations on microstructure were described. This paper reports on the more complete correlation among microstructure, mechanical properties, magnetic properties, and resistivity. For strand annealed (900 to 950°C) material, the mechanical properties are only a weak function of annealing temperature but a strong function of vanadium content. Subsequent annealing at 600°C significantly increases the yield and tensile strengths but the mode of fracture becomes brittle cleavage, in contrast to the ductile failure of strand annealed material. Coercivity in the strand annealed (900 to 950°C) and quenched condition is primarily determined by grain size and transformation strains produced during the quench. Coercivity in 600°C annealed material is due to the fine dispersion of stable γ particles in the α′1 matrix which are impediments to domain wall motion. In general, resistivity is relatively independent of processing temperature.