Environment-assisted crack nucleation in La(Fe,Mn,Si)13-based magnetocaloric materials

The effect of hydrogen on the multiscale mechanical behaviour of a La(Fe,Mn,Si)13-based magnetocaloric material

“…The overall mechanical stability of these brittle materials is highly sensitive to small defects such as cracks. During manufacturing and operational processes, potential origins for crack development include mechanical load upon machining, volume expansion of the La-rich phase in air/water, thermal stress during hydrogenation, and volume change incompatibility at the first-order magnetic phase transition (the volume change is up to ~2% depending on the composition) [7,[14][15][16][17][18][19].…”