Thermodynamic Analysis of the Formation of FCC and BCC Solid Solutions of Ti-Based Ternary Alloys by Mechanical Alloying

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

the manuscript reports about the comparison of thermodynamic modeling results with experimental data for the formation of a solid solution in Ti-based alloys. The results are important in a view of synthesis of solid solution high-entropy alloys. I would recommend mentioning in the discussion on how the actual results could be used for the synthesis of solid solution high-entropy alloys. The same for the introduction. This might bring more attention to your nice paper.

Please remove "novel" from the title.

Maybe for some of your future works, I would like to bring your attention to some recent papers about high-strength titanium alloys and a paper about high-entropy alloys

• Beating Thermal Coarsening in Nanoporous Materials via High‐Entropy Design. Advanced Materials 2019. (Link: https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201906160)

 

• Effect of boron on microstructure and mechanical properties of multicomponent titanium alloys. Mater. Lett. 158, 111–114, 2015 (Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matlet.2015.06.017)

 

• Phase formation, microstructure and deformation behavior of heavily alloyed TiNb-and TiV-based titanium alloys. Mater. Sci. Eng. A 733, 80-86, 2018 (Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.msea.2018.07.047)

 

• Micro-to-nano-scale deformation mechanism of a Ti-based dendritic-ultrafine eutectic alloy exhibiting large tensile ductility. Mater. Sci. Eng. A, 2016 (Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.msea.2016.11.082)

 

• High strength beta titanium alloys: New design approach. Mater. Sci. Eng. A 628, 297–302, 2015 (Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.msea.2015.01.073)

 

• Deformation and fracture behavior of composite structured Ti-Nb-Al-Co(-Ni) alloys. Appl. Phys. Lett. 104, 2014 (Link: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4865930)

 

• Mechanical behavior and tensile/compressive strength asymmetry of ultrafine structured Ti–Nb–Ni–Co–Al alloys with bi-modal grain size distribution. Mater. Des. 62, 14–20, 2014 (Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2014.05.007)

 

• Effect of microstructure on the mechanical properties of as-cast Ti–Nb–Al–Cu–Ni alloys for biomedical application. Mater. Sci. Eng. C 33, 4795–4801, 2013 (Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.msec.2013.07.042)

 

• Significant tensile ductility and toughness in an ultrafine-structured Ti68.8Nb13.6Co6Cu5.1Al6.5 bi-modal alloy. Mater. Sci. Eng. A 615, 457–463 (2014). (Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.msea.2014.07.108)

 

• Composition optimization of low modulus and high-strength TiNb-based alloys for biomedical applications. J. Mech. Behav. Biomed. Mater. 65, 866–871, 2017 (Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmbbm.2016.10.013)

 

• Microstructure and mechanical properties of new composite structured Ti–V–Al–Cu–Ni alloys for spring applications. Mater. Sci. Eng. A 603, 76–83 (2014). (Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.msea.2014.02.070)

 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

1) All changes in the document are red.

2) The suggestions of reviewer were included in the manuscript. Two brief discussion of high entropy alloys were added in the introduction and discussion sections. The “novel” word was removed.

3) Finally, we want to thank the reviewer for the mentioned papers, which are very interesting and we will surely use them in future publications.

Reviewer 2 Report

In this paper thermodynamic analysis of some ternary alloys is presented to determine the formation of solid solutions and compared with experimental data.

The presentation of the work is confusing and it is unclear what experimental work the authors have actually done themselves. The paper includes unreferenced figures from other work (I assume or has this been done by the authors? There is no experimental section describing methods so maybe not). A large part of the discussion is about other papers work/figures, which is already published in the literature. The authors refer to a paper on the Ti-13Ta-3Sn alloy – however looking at this paper, the alloy studied was Ti-13Ta-6Sn. Is this a mistake or was a new alloy studied here? There is also a large number of typographical errors, spelling mistakes and issues with the figures (no labelling e.g. Figure 2, figure 5…).

On the method used, for the Ti-Ta-Sn system what about the formation of intermediate phases? For example Ta-Sn and Ti-Sn form a number of intermediate phases, and therefore there will be regions where the solid solution will not be stable? Is figure 2 therefore valid over the whole composition range?

Overall it is unclear as to what is the new work presented and as such it is suggested that the paper is rejected in its present form.

 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

All changes in the document are red.

We will answer each question separately

• We try to organize the experimental information on the paper to make reading easier.
• All figures were referenced when data was taken from literature.
• Experimental section was added to the manuscript.
• The MAAT software was developed by our group, the experimental data of Ti-Ta-Sn and Ti-Nb-Mn systems from experimentation of our group and for the Ti-Nb-Mn were obtained from literature.
• The Ti-13Ta-3Sn alloys is new.
• The typographical errors and spelling mistakes were corrected.
• The labels of figure 2 and 5 were added.
• For experimental conditions used, formation of intermetallic phases was no observed by XRD and TEM images for the Ti-Ta-Sn system. TEM images were no added in the manuscript because give same information of XRD patterns.
• Figure 2 is valid over the whole composition range considering the characteristics of thermodynamic model.

Reviewer 3 Report

I recommend this paper to be published in Metals. English language and style are fine, no minor spell check required

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

All changes in the document are red.

The typographical errors and spelling mistakes were corrected.

Thank you

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have addressed the comments well.

There are still a number of spell mistakes e.g.

Page 1 Abstract – line 21 – spelling mistake ‘Materials Analysis Applying Themordynamic (MAAAT)’

Author Response

The spelling and grammar mistakes were corrected