The brittleness of annealed copper

✍ Scribed by W.E. Ruder

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1916
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 52 KB
• Volume: 181
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/s0016-0032(16)90166-2

✦ Synopsis

EXPERIMENTS upon the effect of the more common gases for regular and deoxidized copper showed that the brittleness often developed by heating and frequently ascribed to burning is in reality due to deoxidation. With ordinary commercial copper serious brittleness begins to appear at 400 ° C. in dry and 600 ° in wet hydrogen, at 800 to 85 °0 in carbon monoxide, and at 700 ° in steam. Copper previously deoxidized by the addition of boron remains unaffected at all temperatures in a reducing atmosphere. The brittleness is, therefore, probably due to the reduction of the cuprous oxide around the primary copper grains, leaving a spongy mass with little mechanical strength.