Property and thermal stability of in situ composite Cu-Cr alloy contact cable

The in situ composite Cu-Cr alloy, a new type of potential electric material that can be used for contact cables, is reported in this paper. The combination property and thermal stability of the in situ composite Cu-Cr alloy were investigated. Experimental results showed that the in situ composite Cu-Cr alloy has not only high room temperature properties, including ultimate tensile strength Orb, elongation rate 5, relative conductivity sigma(r), and combination property that is scaled by M index (sigma(2)(b)kappa(r)), but also excellent thermal stability of these properties. At room temperature, the combination property of in situ composite Cu-Cr could be up to 18.3 x 10(6) MPa2%, which is higher than those of commonly used copper contact cables all over the world. After being heated for 3 h at 500 degrees C, the combination property of the in situ composite Cu-Cr alloy only decreased 3%. In this paper, the relationship between thermal stability and strengthening mechanism of in situ composite alloy was analyzed. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.