Chap 3- Strengthening

Mechanisms

1
• Deformation of single crystal is explained
by the movement of dislocation
• Slip and Twinning deformations
• Single-crystal specimens for ideal condition

2
• With the exception of solid state electronic
devices, single-crystal are rarely found in
engineering applications
• In polycrystalline materials we must consider
the restraining surrounding grains to explain
plastic deformation
• Basics relationship governing dislocation
• Strength is inversely related to dislocation
mobility
• In high purity crystals, several factors can
affect the strength and mechanical behavior
• Crystal structure determines:
– Number and type of slip systems
– Burgers vector
– Lattice friction stress ( Peierls Stress) which sets
the base strength and temperature dependence of
strength

4
• In closed-packed structure, the Stacking Fault
Energy determines the extent of dislocation
dissociation which influences the ease of cross
slip and subsequent strain hardening

• Purity and method of preparation determines

the initial dislocation density and substructure

• Variables introduce complexity that

mechanical properties cannot be predicted
with prediction as a function of strain, strain
rate, temperature and stress rate

5
• However, more complexity is needed to
produce materials of highest strength and
usefulness
• To increase the strength
– Fine grain size desirable for higher strength
– Large additions of solute atoms
– Fine particles
– Phase transformation

6
 Grain boundary and deformation
• The boundaries between grains a polycrystalline
aggregate are a region of disturbed lattice only a
few atomic diameter wide
• The crystallographic orientation changes abruptly
in passing one grain to the next across the grain
boundary

• High-angle grain boundaries are boundaries with

higher surface energy
7
• Because of their high energy, grain boundaries
serve as preferential sites for solid state
reaction such as diffusion, phase
transformation and precipitation reactions

• High energy of the grain boundary result in

high concentration of solute atom at the
boundary than in the interior of the grain

8
9
• When a single crystal is deformed in tension
– Free to deform in a single slip system
– Changes its orientation by lattice rotation as extension
takes place
• Polycrystals not subjected a to single unixaial
stress systems when deformed in tension
• Continuity must be maintained so that the
boundaries remain intact.
• Each grain tries to deform in conformity of the
whole
• Strain in the vicinity of a grain boundary different
from the strain at the center of the grain
• Grain size decreases and strain will increase
• This causes slip to occur on several systems even
at low strain
• Different slip systems operate in adjacent regions
of the same grain boundary
– Complex lattice rotations
• Formation of deformation bands
• Greater hardness near the boundary than at
the center of grain
• As the diameter the grain is reduced, more
effects of the grain boundaries felt at the
center
• Thus, strain hardening of a fine grain size
metal is greater than in coarse-grain
polycrystal.
• Von Mises showed for a crystal to undergo a
general change of shape by slip
– 5 independent slip systems must exist
• Crystals which do not possess 5 independent slip
systems are never ductile in polycrystalline form
• Cubic metals satisfy the requirement: high
ductility
• HCP do not satisfy the requirement at RT
• Zn and Mg become ductile at high temperature at
which non basal slip can become operative and
increase the number of slip systems to at least 5
Asby’s dislocation model

14
• Statistically stored dislocations
– Encounter and trap one another randomly as in
single crystal
– Generates overlaps and voids between grains
• Geometrically necessary dislocations
– Generated as a result of nonuniform strain in the
crystal
– Grains again fit together
• At temperature above 0.5 TM (Melting
Temperature) deformation can occur by sliding
along the grain boundary

• Grain-boundary sliding becomes important with

increased temperature and decreasing strain rate
such as in creep

• The restriction of deformation to the grain

boundary region is one of the primary source of
high-temperature fracture

16
• Because impurities aggregate to grain
boundaries, intergranular fracture is strongly
influenced by composition

• Above the equicohesive temperature (0.5Tm),

grain boundary is weaker than the grain
interior and strength increases with increasing
grain size

• Below the equicohesive temperature, the

grain boundary is stronger than the grain
interior and strength increases with decreasing
grain size (increasing grain-boundary area)
17
 Strengthening from grain boundaries
• Experiments on bicrystals show a direct
evidence for mechanical strengthening of
grain boundaries
• Yield stress increased linearly with increased
misorientation across the grain boundary
• Resolved shear stress can be expressed as a
function of the orientation factor M
(reciprocal of Schmid factor)
• The energy expended in deforming a
polycrystal must be equal to the sum of the
incremental work on each of the n slip
systems

• Taking average orientation:

• Best estimate for an fcc is

• The strain hardening of an fcc should be about

9.5 times that for a single crystal
 Hall-Petch Relation
• Direct evidence for the mechanical
strengthening of grain boundaries is
provided by experiments on bicrystals
• Hall-Petch: relationship between yield
stress and grain size

21
• Hall-Petch applies not only to grain
boundaries but to other kinds of boundaries
such as ferrite-cementite in pealite,
mechanical twins, and martensite plates
• Consider a dislocation source at the center of
a grain of D which sends out dislocations to
pile-up at the GB
• The stress at the tip of the pile-up must exceed some critical
shear stress to continue past the GB barrier

• The resolved shear stress required to overcome the barrier is

the applied stress less the friction stress to overcome lattice
resistance to dislocation motion
• H-P equation is based for large dislocation
pile-ups
• General model by Li concentrates on the
influence of grain size on the dislocation
density and hence on the yield or flow stress

• is a constant between 0.3 and 0.6

• The tie-in with grain size is based on the
observation that

24
 Grain size measurement

Grain boundary area per unit volume

Mean number of intercepts of random test line

25
26
ASTM grain size number G is related to the number of grain per mm2

27
28
 Low angle grain boundary
• Substructure within the grains surrounded by
high-energy grain boundaries
• Difference in orientation only few minutes of
an arc or few degres
• X-Ray techniques required for the detection
• Lower energy boundary than grain boundaries
– Etch less
Low angle grain boundary

30
• Low-angle boundary contains simple
arrangement of dislocations
• Array of edge dislocations
• Produced by several ways
– During crystal growth
– During high temperature creep deformation
– As a result of phase transformation
• Introduce a small amount of deformation ( 1 to 10%
prestrain)
• Follow with an annealing treatment to rearrange the
dislocations into subgrain boundaries
• Amount of deformation and temp. must be low
enough to prevent recrystallization
– Process is called recrystallization in situ or polygonisation
 Yield point phenomenon
• Many metals in particular low-carbon steel
• Yield point produced in the stress-strain curve
• Yield point associated with small amount of
interstitial or substitutional impurities
• Complete removal of carbon or nitrogen from
carbon will remove the yield point
• General yield stress

• is the stress to operate the dislocation sources

• Dislocation sources were locked or pinned by
solute atom interactions
• C and N atoms in iron diffuse to the position
of minimum energy just below the extra plane
of atoms in a positive edge dislocation
• The dislocation line is pulled free from the
influence of the solute atoms
• Slip can occur at lower stress
Strain aging

38
39
 Solid solution strengthening
• Introduction of solute atoms into solid
solution
• 2 types
– Solute and solvent atoms are roughly the same
size: substitutional solid solution
– Solute atoms are much smaller: interstitial solid
solution
• Example: Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and
boron are used commonly
• Size factor is important
• When size factor differ by less than 15%
– Size factor is favorable
• Otherwise, the extent of solid solubility is
restricted to less than 1%.
• Relative valence is also important
– Solubility of a metal with higher valence in a
solvent of lower valence is more extensive than
for the reverse situation
Solid solution strengthening

42
43
44
Deformation of 2 phase-aggregates

45
46
• Deformation of an alloy consisting of 2 ductile
phases depends on the volume fraction of the 2
phases and the total deformation

• The mechanical properties of an alloy

consisting of ductile phase and a brittle phase
will depend on how the brittle is distributed in
the microstructure
47
• A condition of optimum strength and ductility
when the brittle phase is uniformly distributes
as fine particles throughout the matrix phase.
This is the situation in heat treated steel with
a tempered martensite

• In general second phase block slip so that

plastic deformation is not uniform in the
matrix

48
49
 Strengthening from fine particles
• Small second-phase particles distributed in a
ductile matrix
• In dispersion hardening, the hard particles are
mixed with the matrix powder
• Precipitation hardening or Age hardening is
produced by solution treating and quenching
an alloy in which a second phase is in solid
solution at the elevated temperature but
precipitates upon quenching and aging at a
lower temperature

50
• Example: Aluminum alloys or Copper-Beryllium
Alloys

• The second phase must be soluble at elevated

temperature but must exhibit decreasing
solubility with decreasing temperature

• By contrast, the second phase in dispersion-

hardening has very little solubility in the matrix

51
52
53
• Strongest alloys are produced by combining the
effects of precipitation hardening and strain
hardening
• If plastic deformation precedes the aging
treatment, a finer dispersion is produced when
particles nucleate on the dislocation in the matrix
• Extensive plastic deformation of alloys containing
fine, strong, dispersed particles can result in very
high strength
54
• Particles act as barriers to dislocations in
several ways

• Particles may be either cut by the dislocations

or the fine particles resist cutting and the
dislocations are forced to bypass them

• When the particles are small or/and soft,

dislocations can cut and deform them
55
56
• There are six properties of the particles which
affect the ease with which they can be
sheared

57
58
• Solid solution and particle strengthening have
a significant influence on the deformation
characteristics of the alloy
– Ductility
– Strain-hardening rate
– Fatigue crack initiation
– Fatigue crack growth rate

59
60
61
 Fiber Strengthening
• Because of their high strength, whiskers have
been used for fiber strengthening
• Example

• Most fiber strengthened materials use fibers

of boron or graphite or metal wire such as
tungsten
62
• Metals or Polymers have been used as matrix
materials
• Glass-fiber-reinforced polymers are the most
common fiber-strengthened materials
• Fiber-reinforced materials are known as
composite materials
• The matrix serves to transmit the load to the
fiber
• No need to invoke dislocation theory since the
material behavior is essentially elastic
63
64
 Strength and Moduli of composites
• Use of rule of mixtures applies

• If we apply a tensile force in the direction

of the fiber

65
66
67
68
69
 Load transfer
• The load transfer agent is the bond between
the matrix and the fiber which is represented
by an interfacial shear stress

70
71
72
73
74
 Strengthening due to point defect
• Movement of jogs produced by dislocation can
lead to the formation of point defects
– Vacant sites
– Interstitial atoms
• Quenching from temperatures near the melting
point retains an excess of vacancies

• Example: Quenching of aluminum single crystal

near the melting point produced an increase of
the CRSS from 5 to 50 KPa

75
• The quenched hardened crystals showed
coarse slip band compared to the soft slow-
cooled crystal
• The results can be explained by the
assumption that the excess of vacancies
migrate to dislocations and pin them in a way
similar to solute atoms
• Irradiation can increase the yield stress by a
factor of 2 to 4
• FCC metals (ex: Al, Cu) develop a sharp yield
point increase
• In BCC (Steel, Molybdenum) yield point is
eliminates

76
 Martensite strengthening
• Transformation of austenite to martensite in
quenching of steel is the common
strengthening processes used in engineering

• Only alloys based on iron and carbon show a

pronounced strengthening effect

77
• Contributions of the high strength of
martensite:
– 2 structures of martensite:
• A plate structure and internal structure of paralleled
twins each about 0.1 microns thick within the plates
• A block martensite with high dislocation density
( )
– Carbon composition

78
79
• Solubility of carbon in iron is reduced during the
rapid transformation of austenite to ferrite
• Carbon atoms strain the ferrite lattice and this
strain can be relieved by redistribution of carbon
atoms by diffusion at room temperature
• Strong binding is set up between dislocations and
the carbon atoms
• Restriction of the motion of dislocations
• Another result is the formation of carbon atom
clusters on {110} planes

80
81
 Strain hardening
• Plastic deformation which is carried out in a
temperature region and over a period of time
interval such that the strain hardening is not
relieved is called cold work
• Plastic deformation produces an increase of
the number of dislocations
• Strain hardening or cold work can be detected
by x-ray diffraction

82
Cold Work Structure

83
84
• Because of increased internal energy of the
cold work state, chemical reactivity is
increased
• This leads to a general decrease in corrosion
resistance and in certain alloys introduces the
possibility of stress-corrosion cracking

85
• High rate of strain hardening implies mutual
obstruction of dislocations
– Interaction of the stress fields of the dislocations
– Interactions producing sessile locks
– Interpenetration of one slip system by another
(like cutting trees in forest)
• Basic relationship of the stress field (strain
hardening) and structure

86
87
 Annealing of cold worked metal
• Cold work state is a condition of higher internal
energy
• Cold-work dislocation cell structure is
mechanically stable but thermodynamically
unstable
• With increasing temperature, the cold work state
becomes more unstable
• Eventually, the metal soften and reverts to a
strain-free condition
• The process by which this occurs is known as
annealing
88
• Annealing restores the ductility to a metal that
has been strain-hardened

• Recovery, Recrystallization and Grain Growth

89