Engineering of strong and hard in-situ Al-Al3Ti nanocomposite via high-energy ball milling and spark plasma sintering

•The Al-MMC were produced by spark plasma sintering of high-energy ball-milled Al-TiH2 reactive composites.•Phase and structure formation mechanisms were studied by the ab initio calculations, DSC analysis and in-situ XRD.•The Al-MMC reinforced by fine (0.05–0.25 µm) Al3Ti precipitates.•The Al-MMC produced from Al-1.5%TiH2 shows the maximum ultimate tensile strength of 437 MPa among all investigated samples. Light-weight Al-Ti nanocomposites attract increasing attention due to the advancements in spacecraft and additive manufacturing. In this work, ab initio modeling, DSC, and in-situ XRD experiments were used to formulate a strategy for rapid fabrication of Al-Al3Ti nanocomposites with enhanced mechanical properties (ultimate tensile strength up to 437 MPa at room temperature and up to 109 MPa at 500 °С, ~6% elongation before failure), resulting from a mixed ductile-fragile deformation behavior. The investigated samples were produced by spark plasma sintering of high-energy ball-milled reactive composites Al-TiH2 leading to the precipitation of 0.05–0.25 µm Al3Ti particles from the nanostructured Al matrix. Samples with coarser TiH2 powder or higher TiH2 content featured a minor amount of transitional core-shell structures resulting from the incomplete conversion of the as-formed Ti particles into Al3Ti. The following phase and structure formation mechanism upon the heating of the reactive nanocomposite powders was proposed: Al+δ­TiH2→~450−500°СAl[Ti]+β­Ti[Al]+δ­TiH2−x→~550−600°СAl+Al3Ti. Tentative guidelines for the sintering of Al-TiH2 composites were proposed based on the analysis of diffusion kinetics.