Solute Diffusion Characteristics of a Rapid Hardening Al-Cu-Mg Alloy during the Early Stages of Age Hardening

The heat-transfer characteristics of a rapid hardening Al-1.1Cu-1.7Mg at. pct alloy during the early stages of age hardening have been tested, both by experiment and finite element modeling, for a typical laboratory-scale sample, and subsequently a maximum diffusion distance by random walk has been calculated for the solute atom species. It is found that due to small diffusion distances compared to the average dislocation loop interspacing, the dislocation-locking hardness mechanism is not likely, and rather, the cluster hardening model is more accurate.