Capturing the ultrahigh temperature response of materials with sub-scale tensile testing

Materials that can maintain their strength at extreme temperatures are in great demand. Efforts to develop ultrahigh temperature materials are underway, but ultrahigh temperature data is hard to find, and tensile tests conducted above 1400 °C are expensive and extremely rare. Here, we demonstrate Joule heating of sub-scale specimens as a promising alternative for conducting ultrahigh temperature tensile tests. Challenges associated with testing at extreme temperatures have been addressed, and unique advantages of the new methodology include rapid heating (and cooling) of specimens to temperatures as high as their melting temperatures, in vacuum, with in situ temperature and strain measurement. Proof-of-concept tensile tests on ATI C103™ were conducted at temperatures ranging from 25 to 2,000 °C, and the results are shown to be in excellent agreement with proprietary datasets. This new test methodology has unveiled a new ultrahigh temperature plateau in the ATI C103™ alloy above 1500 °C and opens the door for exploring ultrahigh temperature deformation mechanisms in a wide variety of materials.