Mechanical alloying in the FeAl system

The mechanical alloying technique has been applied to alloy synthesis from FeAl powder mixtures containing 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 at.% Al. An evolution of the powder morphology from flaky in the first stage to spherical in the final stage has been observed. The particle size has been estimated as 50 and 5 μm in the first and final stages of milling respectively. For all alloys studied a disordered b.c.c. solid solution has been formed by ball milling. A grain size of several nanometres and a maximum r.m.s. strain level up to 1% have been observed. The change in lattice parameter has been calculated to be up to 2.4%.