Explosive Welding of Amorphous Alloy Ribbons

Amorphous alloys or metallic glass belongs to a novel class of rapidly solidified alloys, well known for their amorphous structures and excellent properties. Usually, it can only take a very limited number of shapes; thin ribbon, wires or powders. This limitation becomes a major barrier against the spread of the alloys over a wide industrial field. For this reason, a means is necessary to obtain block amorphous alloy. In this paper, the feasibility of bonding amorpious ribbons by explosive means is demonstrated. First, a single ribbon was welded onto a mild steel plate, second, the cladding of 20~200 layers of Fe78B13Si6 and Fe40Ni40P14B6 amorphous ribbons, both of them are 25 m thick and 10 cm wide, were made into tube samples and plate samples. Optical microscope observation and X-ray diffraction analysis were used to check these samples. Results show that the amorphous structure of the alloys still holds after being explosively welded and the welding quality is excellent. Some ribbons initially having crystalline surfaces were also welded, we found that their originally existed -Fe peak disappeared after the explosive welding. This reveals that fusion and rapid cooling occurred at the interfaces between the ribbons during the processing. Finally, it suggests that the deformation of amorphous alloy at lower strain rate is similar to that at commonly used strain rate, but at high strain rate the alloy will show a viscous deformation.