A number of investigators have examined moire patterns on precipitate particles in various age-hardening alloys. For example, Phillips has analyzed moire fringes at cobalt precipitates in copper and Von Heimendahl has reported on moire fringes in the system Al-Au. Recently, we have observed moire patterns on impurity precipitates in beryllium quenched in brine from 1000°C and aged at various temperatures in the range of 500-800°C. This heat treatment of beryllium rolled from vacuum cast ingots produces the precipitation of both an fee ternary phase, AlFeBe4, and an hcp binary phase, FeBe11. However, unlike a typical age-hardening alloy, the solute content of this material is low (less than 1000 ppm of Fe and 600 ppm of Al) and hence the total volume fraction of precipitates is small. Therefore there is some difficulty in distinguishing the precipitates and their orientation relationships with the beryllium matrix since the weak precipitate spots generally do not appear on the diffraction patterns.
