Effects of rare-earth on damping capacity of Fe-17.5Mn alloy

The damping capacity of the Fe-17.5Mn and Fe-17.5Mn-0.3Mm (rare-earths) alloys was measured by reversal torsion device. The microstructure was observed with the Olympus optical microscope. The results show that the damping capacity of Fe-17.5Mn-0.3Mm is obviously higher than that of Fe-17.5Mn binary alloy after quenched at 1000 deg C for 1 h. Addition of 0.3% mass fraction rare-earth elements results in more and thinner martensites in the Fe-17.5Mn-0.3Mm alloy. The more areas of the gamma/epsilon interface and epsilon-martensite variant boundary in unit volume bring more microstructural damping resources on vibration, thus improving the damping capacity of Fe-17.5Mn-0.3Mm.