The recent discovery of Galfenol as a "large" magnetostrictive material (as high as 400με) offers a particularly
promising transducer material that combines largely desirable mechanical attributes with superior magnetic properties.
The high permeability of this material makes it easy to magnetize, however it also causes a relatively low cutoff
frequency in dynamic applications, above which eddy currents form and introduce significant power losses. To reduce
the eddy current losses, magnetostrictive drivers used in dynamic applications are commonly laminated. A second
transducer design consideration is that in materials which exhibit positive magnetostriction, it is common to impose an
initial compressive "prestress" to the material that is sufficient to align the orientation of the magnetic moments within
the material to a direction perpendicular to the stress axis. This is done to maximize the magnetostriction realized when a
magnetic field applied along the stress axis rotates the moments parallel to the stress axis. An alternative to the
application of a compressive prestress is to build-in a uniaxial magnetic anisotropy through stress annealing. Stress
annealing is a high temperature process with simultaneous application of a compressive load and subsequent cooling
under load in which the magnetic moment alignment developed at temperature is retained upon removal from the stress
anneal fixture. The compressive load needed to build in a useful uniaxial magnetic anisotropy in Galfenol is greater than
the buckling load for Galfenol laminae sized for use in high frequency dynamic applications. In this study, prior work on
stress annealing of solid rods of single and polycrystalline samples of Galfenol is successfully extended to thin laminae
of Galfenol by introducing fixtures needed to avoid buckling. The standard stress annealing device uses a hydraulic
actuator to apply compressive stress to the sample. Two linear guides have been added to ensure a normal compression
load path to reduce the potential for buckling of thin laminations. In addition, a mechanical holding fixture was used to
maintain proper alignment of the thin laminations during stress annealing. Data are presented that demonstrate the
magnetic uniaxial anisotropy developed by stress annealing of laminated Galfenol rods.
Galfenol (Fe100-xGax, x = 6, 12.5, 17, 18.4, 19, 22) and Alfenol (Fe81Al19) alloy rods (~50 mm x 6 mm dia.) were annealed under compressive stresses up to 219 MPa at temperatures from 100°C to 700°C for 10 to 100 minutes. Because of the magnetostriction of the alloys, these heat treatments build in a uniaxial magnetic anisotropy that depends upon annealing stress, annealing temperature, and alloy composition. This built-in uniaxial magnetic anisotropy extends the high power capability of these alloys to operate both in tension and in compression.
Magnetization and magnetostriction measurements of both unannealed and annealed alloys were taken from −100 MPa to +40 MPa. To fit the magnetization and magnetostriction as a function of magnetic field and stress, an energy expression containing a fourth order anisotropy term (cubic term) plus a second order uniaxial term was utilized. The computed magnetizations and magnetostrictions are found by an energy-weighted average using the Armstrong smoothing constant. Excellent fits to the magnetostriction and moment data were obtained. From the model fits m, d33 and k33 were calculated. Since the built-in stresses can be found simply from the model, it is possible to predict the amount of prestress built into the alloys.
Research has demonstrated that a built-in uniaxial stress can be achieved in Galfenol materials such that with no externally applied compressive stress, the material appears to be under compression of up to 48 MPa. This built-in stress creates the opportunity for Galfenol to be used under both tensile and compressive loads with full magnetostrictive capability. In order for this effect to be useful in real-world applications, limitations of the stress-annealing must be identified. Typical applications of magnetostrictive materials result in cyclic stress loads and cyclic magnetic fields being applied to the material along with other loading conditions such as elevated temperatures and shock loads. This research investigated the effect of cyclic stress loading and cyclic magnetic fields on the behavior of stress-annealed Galfenol 18.4 (Fe81.6Ga18.4) polycrystal samples with approximately 40 MPa of induced stress in the samples. Testing included cyclic stresses up to 55 MPa for as much as 106 cycles at low frequencies (<10 Hz) and cyclic magnetic fields of amplitudes from 4 kA/m up to 20 kA/m. Because of sample failure issues in the cyclic stress tests, the full 106 cycles were only applied at loads up to 28 MPa. Results of all testing show little or no change in the stress-annealed state of Galfenol 18.4 (Fe81.6Ga18.4) polycrystal samples. Future testing will increase levels of cyclic stress tests and combine stress and magnetic cyclic loads.
The addition of Ga to b.c.c. Fe greatly increases the magnetostriction of Fe in the <100> directions (by a factor of 12 in Fe81Ga19). These Fe-based materials are mechanically tough and thus can be used under both compressive and tensile loading. The object of this study is to examine the effects of temperature aging on Fe81.6Ga18.4 alloys with built-in uniaxial stress anisotropies. To accomplish this, a transverse anisotropy was built into these positive magnetostrictive Fe-Ga (Galfenol) alloys by heat treatment under high compressive stresses. Annealing temperatures between 600 and 635°C and compressive stresses between 100 and 219 MPa produced uniaxial anisotropies between 2 and 9 kJ/m3. It is now possible to obtain magnetostrictions greater than 250 ppm over a broad range of stresses, extending from far into the compressive stress region through zero stress and into the tensile region. In this paper we examine the effect of aging at elevated temperatures on the built-in uniaxial anisotropy and magnetostriction of these alloys. Aging at 150°C for 697 hours left the magnetostriction unchanged. At 200°C most of the uniaxial anisotropy had disappeared after 525 hours. At 250°C, about two-thirds of the uniaxial stress was lost after 168 hours and very little remained after 336 hours.
The addition of Al and Ga to b.c.c. α-Fe increases the magnetostriction of Fe in the [100] direction (a factor of 12 for Fe81Ga19). Fe-based magnetostrictive materials are machineable, mechanically tough and relatively inexpensive. They can be used with tensile loading and saturate in fields of only a few hundred Oe, even under compressive loads up to -100 MPa. The effects of annealing single crystal Fe86.9Ga4.1Al9.0 and Fe86.9Ga8.7Al4.4 and polycrystalline Fe81.6Ga18.4 rods under stress were examined. Stress annealing allows the material to achieve most of its strain without applying a prestress, simplifying device design. Most importantly, it allows the materials to operate magnetostrictively under a tensile load. Annealing was performed in a vacuum furnace with a -100 MPa stress for 10 minutes. The Fe-Ga-Al samples were annealed at 700°C and the Fe-Ga samples at 625°C. The magnetostriction was determined before and after stress annealing using compressive stresses of -0.7 MPa to -28 MPa for the Fe-Ga-Al samples and from ~0 to -97 MPa for the Fe-Ga samples. One of the stress annealed Fe81.6Ga18.4 samples was measured under tensile stresses up to 34 MPa. After annealing, all samples showed full performance at near-zero stresses and tensile stress up to +20 MPa.
Single crystal specimens of Fe-17 at. % Ga were tested in tension at room temperature. Specimens with a tensile axis orientation of [110] displayed slip lines on the specimen faces corresponding to slip on the {110}<111> with a critical resolved shear stress of 220 MPa. Yielding began at 0.3% elongation and 450 MPa. An ultimate tensile strength of 580 MPa was observed with no fracture occurring through 1.6% elongation. The Young’s modulus was 160 GPa in the loading direction with a Poisson’s ratio of -0.37 on the (100) major face. A specimen with a tensile axis orientation of [100] showed slip lines corresponding to slip on the {211}<111> with critical resolved shear stress of 240 MPa. Discontinuous yielding began at 0.8% elongation, which was thought to result from twinning, kink band formation, or stress-induced transformation. The Young's modulus was 65 GPa in the loading direction with a Poisson’s ratio of 0.45 on the (001) major face. A maximum tensile strength of 515 MPa was observed with fracture occurring after 2% elongation. A sizeable elastic anisotropy of 19.9 was identified for Fe-27.2 at. % Ga accompanied by a Poisson's ratio of -0.75 to produce a large in-plane auxetic behavior.
Magnetostrictive materials have not changed greatly from their discovery by Joule in 1842 through the 1960's. Their saturation strains remained small and their magnetomechanical couplings were only moderate. The separation of the rare earth elements during World War II and the subsequent measurement of their magnetic properties, created the groundwork for the development of 'giant' magnetostrictive materials during the 1960's. Magnetically anisotropic Tb and Dy became the generators of unprecedented classical magnetostrictions of nearly 1 percent. Coupling factors increased to approximately 0.8. During the same period, a remarkable 5-fold increase of magnetostriction of commonplace b.c.c. Fe with concentrations of Al near 1 18 percent was discovered. More recently, measurements in b.c.c. Fe-Ga alloys have shown a still greater enhancement of the magnetostriction, yielding strains of nearly 400 X 10-6 over the wide range in temperature from 4 K to far above room temperature. In the Fe alloys, as well as in the rare earth alloys, there is no known stress limit to the magnetostriction. Power output is limited by magnetic field generation and mechanical sample failure. Within the last few years, a new class of magnetostrictive materials, ferromagnetic shape memory alloys (FSMA's), have been introduced. These materials have huge magnetically induced strains. However, unlike the classical magnetostrictive alloys, these strains may be stress limited. While all the above materials have been introduced primarily for their high power electrical to mechanical energy conversion capability, they also function in the reciprocal mode, as magnetomechanical sensing materials.
Tb1-xDyxZn(01-xDyx alloys exist in the hexagonal phase, with the c-axis extremely hard, whereas for Tb1-xDyxFe2, a cubic Laves phase alloy, very hard <111> axes can be changed to very hard <100> axes by increasing x from 0 to 1. (In fact, the existence of a near zero magnetic anisotropy by the proper choice of x is the origin of the well-known Terfenol-D alloys, Tb1-xDyxFe2). The Tb$1-x)DyxZn system discussed here is particularly attractive because of the simplicity of its crystal structure (CsCl), its relatively high Curie temperatures (for rare earth alloys), and the existence of a large (uv0) phase for T < 50K. A summary of some of the important properties of these three alloy systems is given in Table I. In all these systems, at least one of the magnetostriction constraints is very large.
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