Compression Behavior and Textures of Ti57-Nb43 Alloy at High Temperatures.

The mechanical behavior, microstructures, as well as the crystallographic textures of the Ti57-Nb43 alloy were investigated on cylindrical specimens compressed at high temperatures, in the range of 700-1000 °C, and strain rates between 0.001 and 1.0 s-1. Hardening, followed by softening behaviors, were observed as a function of strain due to the occurrence of dynamic recrystallization/recovery in hot deformation. The modified five-parameter Voce-type equation described well the stress-strain curves, but, for the present alloy, it was also possible with only four parameters. A new two-variables polynomial function was employed on the four parameters that described well the flow curves as a direct function of temperature and strain rate. It permitted the reduction in the number of parameters and had the predictive capacity for the flow stress at any temperature, strain, and strain rate in the investigated range. The crystallographic textures were similar at all temperatures, with an increase in intensity from 900 °C. The textures could be characterized by a double <100> and <111> fiber and a unique component of (001) <110>, the latter inherited from the initial hot-rolling texture. Viscoplastic polycrystal self-consistent deformation modeling reproduced the measured textures showing that dynamic recrystallization did not alter the development of the deformation texture, only increased its intensity.

A Polymer-Based Metallurgical Route to Produce Aluminum Metal-Matrix Composite with High Strength and Ductility.

In this investigation, an attempt was made to develop a new high-strength and high-ductility aluminum metal-matrix composite. It was achieved by incorporating ceramic reinforcement into the metal which was formed in situ from a polymer by pyrolysis. A crosslinked PMHS polymer was introduced into commercially pure aluminum via friction stir processing (FSP). The distributed micro- and nano-sized polymer was then converted into ceramic particles by heating at 500 °C for 10 h and processed again via FSP. The produced composite showed a 2.5-fold increase in yield strength (to 119 MPa from 48 MPa) and 3.5-fold increase in tensile strength (to 286 MPa from 82 MPa) with respect to the base metal. The ductility was marginally reduced from 40% to 30%. The increase in strength is attributed to the grain refinement and the larger ceramic particles. High-temperature grain stability was obtained, with minimal loss to mechanical properties, up to 500 °C due to the Zenner pinning effect of the nano-sized ceramic particles at the grain boundaries. Fractures took place throughout the matrix up to 300 °C. Above 300 °C, the interfacial bonding between the particle and matrix became weak, and fractures took place at the particle-matrix interface.

Microstructure, Texture and Mechanical Properties in Aluminum Produced by Friction-Assisted Lateral Extrusion.

The Friction-Assisted Lateral Extrusion Process (FALEP) is a severe plastic deformation (SPD) technique for producing metal sheets from bulk metal or powder in one single deformation step at room temperature. In the present work, aluminum Al-1050 was deformed by FALEP. Then, its microstructure was examined by EBSD; the crystallographic texture by X-ray; material strength, ductility, and the Lankford parameter by tensile testing; the latter also by polycrystal plasticity simulations. It is shown that the microstructure was highly refined, with the grain size reduced more than 160 times down to 600 nm under the imposed shear strain of 20. The obtained texture was a characteristic simple shear texture with a shear plane nearly parallel to the plane of the sheet. The yield and ultimate strengths increased by about 10 times and three times, respectively. The Lankford parameter was 1.28, which is very high for aluminum, and due to the specific shear texture, unusual in a sheet. All these exceptional characteristics of Al-1050 were obtained thanks to the efficiency of the FALEP SPD process, which is a promising candidate for industrial applications.

Polycrystal Simulation of Texture-Induced Grain Coarsening during Severe Plastic Deformation.

During severe plastic deformation (SPD), there is usually extended grain fragmentation, associated with the formation of a crystallographic texture. The effect of texture evolution is, however, coarsening in grain size, as neighbor grains might coalesce into one grain by approaching the same ideal orientation. This work investigates the texture-induced grain coarsening effect in face-centered cubic polycrystals during simple shear, in 3D topology. The 3D polycrystal aggregate was constructed using a cellular automaton model with periodic boundary conditions. The grains constituting the polycrystal were assigned to orientations, which were updated using the Taylor polycrystal plasticity approach. At the end of plastic straining, a grain detection procedure (similar to the one in electron backscatter diffraction, but in 3D) was applied to detect if the orientation difference between neighboring grains decreased below a small critical value (5°). Three types of initial textures were considered in the simulations: shear texture, random texture, and cube-type texture. The most affected case was the further shearing of an initially already shear texture: nearly 40% of the initial volume was concerned by the coalescence effect at a shear strain of 4. The coarsening was less in the initial random texture (~30%) and the smallest in the cube-type texture (~20%). The number of neighboring grains coalescing into one grain went up to 12. It is concluded that the texture-induced coarsening effect in SPD processing cannot be ignored and should be taken into account in the grain fragmentation process.

Unlocking Deformation Path in Asymmetric Rolling by Texture Simulation.

The texture evolution is wearing the signature of the deformation path in plastic deformation. In asymmetric rolling, plain strain compression and shear are the main components of the imposed strain. In this work, viscoplastic self-consistent (VPSC) simulations of the texture evolution were used to determine the combination and sequence of the two deformation components. It has been found that the deformation path is composed of two parts in asymmetric rolling: it is first essentially rolling, followed by the simple shear process. Simultaneous rolling and shear process cannot produce the observed textures, while the decomposed simulation can reproduce it faithfully.

Tailoring One-Pass Asymmetric Rolling of Extra Low Carbon Steel for Shear Texture and Recrystallization.

Systematic single pass rolling experiments were carried out at room temperature on extra low carbon steel by varying the roll diameter ratio between 1:1 to 1:2 and thickness reduction per pass in the range of 20-75%. The aim of this study was to define the conditions under which the rolling texture can transit into a shear texture. The consequences for grain fragmentation, tensile strength, recrystallization texture, and grain growth kinetics were also studied. It was found that in a certain range of thickness reduction per pass and asymmetric ratio, an effective rotation towards the shear texture takes place in conventional rolling. The value of the shear coefficient factor (shear strain rate/rolling strain rate) in asymmetric rolling depends on the selection of thickness reduction per pass. The measured value of shear coefficient was found to be independent of the number of passes used in asymmetric rolling. The consequence of arising shear textures is an acceleration of grain fragmentation. After rapid heat treatment, both tensile strength and recrystallization kinetics of asymmetric rolled sheets showed merits over the conventional rolling. Only the evolved Goss orientation from asymmetric conditions of deformation shows higher stability than any other preferred shear texture components after complete recrystallization.

Crystal Plasticity Modeling of Anisotropic Hardening and Texture Due to Dislocation Transmutation in Twinning.

In crystalline materials, dislocations are three-dimensional lattice distortions that systematically distort twin interfaces that they encounter. This results in dislocation dissociation events and changes in the atomic structure of the interface. The manner in which the interface distorts drive the product of the dissociation event, and consequently, the incident dislocation core and the magnitude and relative direction of the Burgers vector govern these slip-twin interaction phenomena. Recent characterization studies using transmission electron microscopy as well as advanced molecular dynamic simulations have shown that slip dislocations, whether striking or struck by a {10 1 ¯ 2} twin boundary, dissociate into a combination of twinning disconnections, interfacial disclinations (facets), jogs, and other types of dislocations engulfed inside the twin domains, called transmuted dislocations. While twinning disconnections were found to promote twin propagation, the dislocations incorporated inside the twin are of considerable importance to hardening and damage initiation as they more significantly obstruct slip dislocations accommodating plasticity of the twins. In this work, the dislocation transmutation event and its effect on hardening is captured using a dislocation density based hardening model contained in a visco-plastic self-consistent mean-field model. This is done by allowing the twins to increase their dislocation densities, not only by virtue of slip inside the twin, but also through dislocations that transmute from the parents as the twin volume fraction increases. A correspondence matrix rule is used to determine the type of converted dislocations while tracking and parameterizing their evolution. This hypothesis provides a modeling framework for capturing slip-twin interactions. The model is used to simulate the mechanical response of pure Mg and provides a more physically based approach for modeling stress-strain behavior.

Effect of Strain Heterogeneities on Microstructure, Texture, Hardness, and H-Activation of High-Pressure Torsion Mg Consolidated from Different Powders.

Severe plastic deformation techniques, such as high-pressure torsion (HPT), have been increasingly applied on powder materials to consolidate bulk nanostructured materials. In this context, the aim of the present study is to compare the plastic deformation characteristics during HPT of two distinct Mg-based powder precursors: (i) atomized micro-sized powder and (ii) condensed and passivated nanopowder. Dynamic recrystallization could take place during HPT consolidation of the atomized powder particles while the oxide pinning of the grain boundaries restricted it for the condensed powder. Consequently, there have been substantial differences in the development of the microstructure, texture, local strain heterogeneities, and hardness in the two types of consolidated products. Different types of local strain heterogeneities were also revealed in the consolidated products. The associated diversity in microstructure within the same consolidated product has been demonstrated to have an effect on the hydrogen activation kinetics to form hydrides for these Mg-based materials that could be suitable for solid state H-storage applications.

Effects of Processing Conditions on Texture and Microstructure Evolution in Extra-Low Carbon Steel during Multi-Pass Asymmetric Rolling.

Multi-pass rolling was carried out on extra-low carbon steel at room temperature by imposing different ratios of asymmetry in the roll-diameters as well as by conventional mode. The aim of this study is to understand the effect of shear deformation due to the asymmetric conditions on the development of the rolling texture and the possibilities of propagating the shear deformation into the mid-thickness area of the sheet. The trends of the measured texture developments in both symmetric and asymmetric rolling indicate their dependence primarily on the stability and fraction of the Goss {110}<001> and the rotated cube {001}<111> orientations. The effects of asymmetry conditions were further examined on the microstructure evolution and were correlated to the increased orientation inhomogeneity and grain fragmentation. Both texture and microstructure development showed their dependence on the applied thickness reduction per pass, on the total thickness reduction of the sheet as well as on the degree of the imposed asymmetry. It was found that shear textures can be obtained by asymmetric rolling at conditions where all three parameters-asymmetry ratio, strain in one pass, and the total accumulated strain-are as large as possible.

Mechanical Modelling of the Plastic Flow Machining Process.

A new severe plastic deformation process, plastic flow machining (PFM), was introduced recently to produce sheet materials with ultrafine and gradient structures from bulk samples in one single deformation step. During the PFM process, a part of a rectangular sample is transformed into a thin sheet or fin under high hydrostatic pressure. The obtained fin is heavily deformed and presents a strain gradient across its thickness. The present paper aims to provide better understanding about this new process via analytical modelling accompanied by finite element simulations. PFM experiments were carried out on square commercially pure aluminum (CP Al) billets. Under pressing, the material flowed from the horizontal channel into a narrow 90° oriented lateral channel to form a fin sheet product, and the remaining part of the sample continued to move along the horizontal channel. At the opposite end of the bulk sample, a back-pressure was applied to increase the hydrostatic pressure in the material. The experiments were set at different width sizes of the lateral channel under two conditions; with or without applying back-pressure. A factor called the lateral extrusion ratio was defined as the ratio between the volume of the produced fin and the incoming volume. This ratio characterizes the efficiency of the PFM process. The experimental results showed that this ratio was greater when back-pressure was applied and further, it increased with the rise of the lateral channel width size. Finite element simulations were conducted in the same boundary conditions as the experiments using DEFORM-2D/3D software, V11.0. Two analytical models were also established. The first one used the variational principle to predict the lateral extrusion ratio belonging to the minimum total plastic power. The second one employed an upper-bound approach on a kinematically admissible velocity field to describe the deformation gradient in the fin. The numerical simulations and the analytical modelling successfully predicted the experimental tendencies, including the deformation gradient across the fin thickness.

Combined Effects of Texture and Grain Size Distribution on the Tensile Behavior of α-Titanium.

This work analyzes the role of both the grain size distribution and the crystallographic texture on the tensile behavior of commercially pure titanium. Specimens with different microstructures, especially with several mean grain sizes, were specifically prepared for that purpose. It is observed that the yield stress depends on the grain size following a Hall⁻Petch relationship, that the stress⁻strain curves have a tendency to form a plateau that becomes more and more pronounced with decreasing mean grain size and that the hardening capacity increases with the grain size. All these observations are well reproduced by an elasto-visco-plastic self-consistent model that incorporates grain size effects within a crystal plasticity framework where dislocations’ densities are the state variables. First, the critical resolved shear stresses are made dependent on the individual grain size through the addition of a Hall⁻Petch type term. Then, the main originality of the model comes from the fact that the multiplication of mobile dislocation densities is also made grain size dependent. The underlying assumption is that grain boundaries act mainly as barriers or sinks for dislocations. Hence, the smaller the grain size, the smaller the expansion of dislocation loops and thus the smaller the increase rate of mobile dislocation density is. As a consequence of this hypothesis, both mobile and forest dislocation densities increase with the grain size and provide an explanation for the grain size dependence of the transient low work hardening rate and hardening capacity.

Modeling the Effect of Primary and Secondary Twinning on Texture Evolution during Severe Plastic Deformation of a Twinning-Induced Plasticity Steel.

Modeling the effect of deformation twinning and the ensuing twin-twin- and slip-twin-induced hardening is a long-standing problem in computational mechanical metallurgy of materials that deform by both slip and twinning. In this work, we address this effect using the twin volume transfer method, which obviates the need of any cumbersome criterion for twin variant selection. Additionally, this method is capable of capturing, at the same time, secondary or double twinning, which is particularly important for modeling in large strain regimes. We validate our modeling methodology by simulating the behavior of an Fe-23Mn-1.5Al-0.3C twinning-induced plasticity (TWIP) steel under large strain conditions, experimentally achieved in this work through equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP) for up to two passes in a 90° die following route BC at 300 °C. Each possible twin variant, whether nucleating inside the parent grain or inside a potential primary twin variant was predefined in the initial list of orientations as possible grain of the polycrystal with zero initial volume fraction. A novelty of our approach is to take into account the loss of coherency of the twins with their parent matrix under large strains, obstructing progressively their further growth. This effect has been captured by attenuating growth rates of twins as a function of their rotation away from their perfect twin orientation, dubbed here as "disorientation" with respect to the mother grain's lattice. The simulated textures and the hardening under tensile strain showed very good agreement with experimental characterization and mechanical testing results. Furthermore, upper-bound Taylor deformation was found to be operational for the TWIP steel deformation when all the above ingredients of twinning are captured, indicating that self-consistent schemes can be bypassed.

Revealing Grain Boundary Sliding from Textures of a Deformed Nanocrystalline Pd-Au Alloy.

Employing a recent modeling scheme for grain boundary sliding [Zhao et al. Adv. Eng. Mater.2017, doi:10.1002/adem.201700212], crystallographic textures were simulated for nanocrystalline fcc metals deformed in shear compression. It is shown that, as grain boundary sliding increases, the texture strength decreases while the signature of the texture type remains the same. Grain boundary sliding affects the texture components differently with respect to intensity and angular position. A comparison of a simulation and an experiment on a Pd-10 atom % Au alloy with a 15 nm grain size reveals that, at room temperature, the predominant deformation mode is grain boundary sliding contributing to strain by about 60%.

The self-similarity theory of high pressure torsion.

By analyzing the problem of high pressure torsion (HPT) in the rigid plastic formulation, we show that the power hardening law of plastically deformed materials leads to self-similarity of HPT, admitting a simple mathematical description of the process. The analysis shows that the main parameters of HPT are proportional to ß q , with ß being the angle of the anvil rotation. The meaning of the parameter q is: q = 0 for velocity and strain rate, q = 1 for shear strain and von Mises strain, q = n for stress, pressure and torque (n is the exponent of a power hardening law). We conclude that if the hardening law is a power law in a rotation interval ß, self-similar regimes can emerge in HPT if the friction with the lateral wall of the die is not too high. In these intervals a simple mathematical description can be applied based on self-similarity. Outside these ranges, the plasticity problem still has to be solved for each value of ß. The results obtained have important practical implications for the proper design and analysis of HPT experiments.