Abstract: Composite materials having lamellar structure are known to have a good combination of high strength and ductility. They are widely used in the fields of automobiles, civil engineering and construction, machines and many other industries. An application of lamellar microstructure for developing ultra-high strength steel wires was studied and discussed. Based on the experimental results, the relationships between the strength increase and microstructure development during the cold wire drawing were studied to reveal the strengthening mechanism. As cold drawing proceeds, the wire strength extremely increases, the microstructure changes from large single crystal lamellar structure to very fine polycrystalline lamellar one which has nano-sized grains, high dislocation density and amorphous regions. From the results obtained, it is concluded that heavy cold drawing technique is an effective method for lamellar composite to get high strength wires. Furthermore, formation process of the best microstructure for producing the ultra-high strength wires was also discussed.

Key words: lamellar composite; strengthening mechanism; wire drawing; amorphous phase; mechanical property