Manufacturing of Nanostructure-Enhanced Mn-Al-base Materials for High Performance Permanent Magnets via Optimization of Orthogonal Cutting Based Machining

Continuous growing demands on renewable energy technologies lead rare earth free permanent magnet (PM) development. Current state of the art PM materials rely on rare earth elements and the environmental and economic impacts of the rare earth element (REE) are evident. Manganese based PM has been considered as prospective rare earth free (REF) PM including Manganese aluminum (MnAl) alloy. Ongoing research efforts to realize the merits of MnAl based PM are not satisfying. This Investigation explores the novel manufacturing process to produce high performance MnAl PM materials. Machining based orthogonal cutting process is utilized to expose severe plastic deformation (SPD) on the bulk feedstock materials. Examine and post machining process shows orthogonal cutting of MnAl bulk alloy can produce nano-scale internal structure with stored cold work which beneficial for enhanced phase transformation kinetics towards the ferromagnetic phase. Measured magnetic energy product BH(max) of the manufactured MnAl PM materials showing promising results for further studies on machining based PM materials manufacturing