Property and thermal stability of in situ composite Cu–Cr alloy contact cable

The in situ composite Cu–Cr alloy, a new type of potential electric material that can be used for contact cables, is reported in this paper. The combination property and thermal stability of the in situ composite Cu–Cr alloy were investigated. Experimental results showed that the in situ composite Cu–Cr alloy has not only high room temperature properties, including ultimate tensile strength σb, elongation rate 5, relative conductivity σr, and combination property that is scaled by M index (image), but also excellent thermal stability of these properties. At room temperature, the combination property of in situ composite Cu–Cr could be up to 18.3 × 106 MPa2%, which is higher than those of commonly used copper contact cables all over the world. After being heated for 3 h at 500 °C, the combination property of the in situ composite Cu–Cr alloy only decreased 3%. In this paper, the relationship between thermal stability and strengthening mechanism of in situ composite alloy was analyzed.