LAUSR

Achieving a balance between strength and room-temperature ductility remains an urgent need and a significant challenge for body-centered cubic (BCC) structure materials. In this paper, a good combination of strength and ductility in single-phase BCC-structured Ti3VNbAl0.5Zrx (x = 0, 0.1, 0.5, and 1) lightweight high-entropy alloys (LHEAs) was designed by reducing the valence-electron concentration in combination with the d-electron theory. The influences of Zr on the microstructures and mechanical properties of the alloys were systematically studied. The yield strengths of Zr0, Zr0.1, Zr0.5, and Zr1 alloys were 644 MPa, 703 MPa, 827 MPa, and 904 Mpa, respectively. The tensile strains of Zr0, Zr0.1, Zr0.5, and Zr1 alloys were 29%, 30%, 20%, and 16%, respectively. The deformation mechanism was studied using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The results demonstrate that the alloys could still maintain single-phase BCC structure after deformation, and neither phase transformation nor twinning was detected during the deformation process. The main deformation mechanism of the Zr1 alloy is dislocation slip. The current work has great significance for developing high-strength, ductile, and low-density structural materials.