Invar – Material Table – Applications – Price

About Invar

Invar is an alloy of nickel and iron. This alloy is also known generically as FeNi36 (64FeNi in the US). Invar is notable for its uniquely low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE or α). The name Invar comes from the word invariable, referring to its relative lack of expansion or contraction with temperature changes. Invar has a near-zero coefficient of thermal expansion, making it useful in constructing precision instruments whose dimensions need to remain constant in spite of varying temperature. The discovery of the alloy was made in 1896 by Swiss physicist Charles Édouard Guillaume for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1920.

Summary

Name	Invar
Phase at STP	solid
Density	8100 kg/m3
Ultimate Tensile Strength	445 MPa
Yield Strength	280 MPa
Young’s Modulus of Elasticity	135 GPa
Brinell Hardness	200 BHN
Melting Point	1687 °C
Thermal Conductivity	12 W/mK
Heat Capacity	505 J/g K
Price	29 $/kg

Composition of Invar

Invar, alloy of iron that expands very little when heated; it contains 64 percent iron and 36 percent nickel.

Applications of Invar

Invar was formerly used for absolute standards of length measurement and is now used for surveying tapes and in watches and various other temperature-sensitive devices. Invar is used where high dimensional stability is required, such as precision instruments, clocks, seismic creep gauges, television shadow-mask frames, valves in engines and large aerostructure molds.

Mechanical Properties of Invar

Strength of Invar

In mechanics of materials, the strength of a material is its ability to withstand an applied load without failure or plastic deformation. Strength of materials basically considers the relationship between the external loads applied to a material and the resulting deformation or change in material dimensions. In designing structures and machines, it is important to consider these factors, in order that the material selected will have adequate strength to resist applied loads or forces and retain its original shape.

Strength of a material is its ability to withstand this applied load without failure or plastic deformation. For tensile stress, the capacity of a material or structure to withstand loads tending to elongate is known as ultimate tensile strength (UTS). Yield strength or yield stress is the material property defined as the stress at which a material begins to deform plastically whereas yield point is the point where nonlinear (elastic + plastic) deformation begins. In case of tensional stress of a uniform bar (stress-strain curve), the Hooke’s law describes behaviour of a bar in the elastic region. The Young’s modulus of elasticity is the elastic modulus for tensile and compressive stress in the linear elasticity regime of a uniaxial deformation and is usually assessed by tensile tests.

See also: Strength of Materials

Ultimate Tensile Strength of Invar

Ultimate tensile strength of Invar is 445 MPa.

Yield Strength of Invar

Yield strength of Invar is 280 MPa.

Modulus of Elasticity of Invar

The Young’s modulus of elasticity of Invar is 135 GPa.

Hardness of Invar

In materials science, hardness is the ability to withstand surface indentation (localized plastic deformation) and scratching. Brinell hardness test is one of indentation hardness tests, that has been developed for hardness testing. In Brinell tests, a hard, spherical indenter is forced under a specific load into the surface of the metal to be tested.

The Brinell hardness number (HB) is the load divided by the surface area of the indentation. The diameter of the impression is measured with a microscope with a superimposed scale. The Brinell hardness number is computed from the equation:

Brinell hardness of Invar is approximately 200 BHN (converted).

See also: Hardness of Materials

Thermal Properties of Invar

Invar – Melting Point

Melting point of Invar is 1687 °C.

Note that, these points are associated with the standard atmospheric pressure. In general, melting is a phase change of a substance from the solid to the liquid phase. The melting point of a substance is the temperature at which this phase change occurs. The melting point also defines a condition in which the solid and liquid can exist in equilibrium. For various chemical compounds and alloys, it is difficult to define the melting point, since they are usually a mixture of various chemical elements.

Invar – Thermal Conductivity

Thermal conductivity of Invar is 12 W/(m·K).

The heat transfer characteristics of a solid material are measured by a property called the thermal conductivity, k (or λ), measured in W/m.K. It is a measure of a substance’s ability to transfer heat through a material by conduction. Note that Fourier’s law applies for all matter, regardless of its state (solid, liquid, or gas), therefore, it is also defined for liquids and gases.

The thermal conductivity of most liquids and solids varies with temperature. For vapors, it also depends upon pressure. In general:

Most materials are very nearly homogeneous, therefore we can usually write k = k (T). Similar definitions are associated with thermal conductivities in the y- and z-directions (ky, kz), but for an isotropic material the thermal conductivity is independent of the direction of transfer, kx = ky = kz = k.

Invar – Specific Heat

Specific heat of Invar is 505 J/g K.

Specific heat, or specific heat capacity, is a property related to internal energy that is very important in thermodynamics. The intensive properties c_v and c_p are defined for pure, simple compressible substances as partial derivatives of the internal energy u(T, v) and enthalpy h(T, p), respectively:

where the subscripts v and p denote the variables held fixed during differentiation. The properties c_v and c_p are referred to as specific heats (or heat capacities) because under certain special conditions they relate the temperature change of a system to the amount of energy added by heat transfer. Their SI units are J/kg K or J/mol K.

Properties and prices of other materials

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