Journal of Advanced Materials in Engineering (Esteghlal)

---

Charpy impact energy of functionally graded steels in the form of crack arrester configuration was investigated. Functionally graded steels which contain layers of ferrite, austenite, bainite and/or martensite could be produced by electroslag remelting. The results showed that notch tip position and the distances of notch with respect to the bainite and martensite layers significantly affect the impact energy of the specimens. Generally, the plastic deformation zone ahead of a crack in a functionally graded material depends on the position of the notch tip where according to the direction of gradient slope may increase or decrease. The closer the notch tips to the brittle phase, the smaller the impact energy of the specimen and vice versa. The effect of plastic zone size on impact energy of functionally graded steels was notionally investigated.

---

In this paper, milling was investigated as a method for production of Mn-Ga binary alloys and the effect of milling process on phase formation of Mn:Ga samples with 2:1 and 3:1 ratio within 1, 2 and 5 hour milling times was studied. For Mn:Ga samples, according to the results, Mn_1.86Ga compound with tetragonal structure and I4/mmm space group was a stable phase. Also, some amounts of  Mn₃Ga compound with orthorhombic structure and Cmca space group was observed in the Mn:Ga solution. The effect of Ge addition, with the purpose of  replacing Ge with Ga was also studied in Mn:Ga:Ge (3:0.5:0.5) sample. Although improved magnetic properties is expected with the addition of Ge, but increasing the coercivity was occurred, and saturation magnetization did not change significantly in the studied sample. Ge addition caused elimination of the possibility of formation of asymmetric orthorhombic Mn₃Ga phase. In return, two new structures of Mn₁₁Ge₈ and MnGaGe were appeared. This phase change was confirmed by studying magnetic behaviour of samples. This behavior can be caused by unbalanced electrostatic forces resulting from Mn-Mn exchange interaction in Mn₃Ga orthorhombic structure and substitution of some Ge atoms with Ga.