Anelastic and structural behavior of ball milled nanostructured iron

Mechanical spectroscopy and XRD analysis were employed to study the anelastic behaviour and structural evolution of nanostructured iron prepared by mechanical attrition under different conditions. The results show that the thermally induced structural relaxation, without extensive grain growth, leads to strong reductions of the microstrain, dynamic modulus recovery and significant modifications of the anelastic relaxation spectra. These results are compared with those obtained by other structure sensitive techniques. The role of the interfaces and of their structural evolution in determining the observed behaviour of different physical properties is discussed. (C) 1998 Acta Metallurgica Inc.