- Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Deformation twinning is rarely found in bulk face-centered cubic (FCC) alloys with very high stacking fault energy (SFE) under standard loading conditions. Here, based on results from bulk quasi-static tensile experiments, we report deformation twinning in a micrometer grain-sized compositionally complex steel (CCS) with a very high SFE of ~79 mJ/m2, far above the SFE regime for twinning (<~50 mJ/m2) reported for FCC steels. The dual-nanoprecipitation, enabled by the compositional degrees of freedom, contributes to an ultrahigh true tensile stress up to 1.9 GPa in our CCS. The strengthening effect enhances the flow stress to reach the high critical value for the onset of mechanical twinning. The formation of nanotwins in turn enables further strain hardening and toughening mechanisms that enhance the mechanical performance. The high stress twinning effect introduces a so far untapped strengthening and toughening mechanism, for enabling the design of high SFEs alloys with improved mechanical properties. © 2022, The Author(s).

Premature failure of rail and bearing steels by White-Etching-Cracks leads to severe economic losses. This failure mechanism is associated with microstructure decomposition via local severe plastic deformation. The decomposition of cementite plays a key role. Due to the high hardness of this phase, it is the most difficult obstacle to overcome in the decaying microstructure. Understanding the mechanisms of carbide decomposition is essential for designing damage-resistant steels for industrial applications. We investigate cementite decomposition in the bearing steel 100Cr6 (AISI 52100) upon exposure to high-pressure torsion (maximum shear strain, Ƴmax = 50.2). Following-up on our earlier work on cementite decomposition in hardened 100Cr6 steel (Qin et al., Act. Mater. 2020 [1]), we now apply a modified heat treatment to generate a soft-annealed microstructure where spherical and lamellar cementite precipitates are embedded in a ferritic matrix. These two precipitate types differ in morphology (spherical vs. lamellar), size (spherical: 100–1000 nm diameter, lamellar: 40–100 nm thickness) and composition (Cr and Mn partitioning). We unravel the correlation between cementite type and its resistance to decomposition using multi-scale chemical and structural characterization techniques. Upon high-pressure torsion, the spherical cementite precipitates did not decompose, but the larger spherical precipitates (≥ 1 μm) deformed. In contrast, the lamellar cementite precipitates underwent thinning followed by decomposition and dissolution. Moreover, the decomposition behavior of cementite precipitates is affected by the type of matrix microstructure. We conclude that the cementite size and morphology, as well as the matrix mechanical properties are the predominating factors influencing the decomposition behavior of cementite. The compositional effects of Cr and Mn on cementite stability calculated by complementary density functional theory (DFT) calculations are minor in the current scenario. © 2021 Elsevier B.V.

Tissue degradation plays a crucial role in vascular diseases such as atherosclerosis and aneurysms. Computational modeling of vascular hemodynamics incorporating both arterial wall mechanics and tissue degradation has been a challenging task. In this study, we propose a novel finite element method-based approach to model the microscopic degradation of arterial walls and its interaction with blood flow. The model is applied to study the combined effects of pulsatile flow and tissue degradation on the deformation and intra-aneurysm hemodynamics. Our computational analysis reveals that tissue degradation leads to a weakening of the aneurysmal wall, which manifests itself in a larger deformation and a smaller von Mises stress. Moreover, simulation results for different heart rates, blood pressures and aneurysm geometries indicate consistently that, upon tissue degradation, wall shear stress increases near the flow-impingement region and decreases away from it. These findings are discussed in the context of recent reports regarding the role of both high and low wall shear stress for the progression and rupture of aneurysms. © 2022, The Author(s).

Deformation-induced martensitic transformation (DIMT) has been used for designing high-performance alloys to prevent structural failure under static loads. Its effectiveness against fatigue, however, is unclear. This limits the application of DIMT for parts that are exposed to variable loads, although such scenarios are the rule and not the exception for structural failure. Here we reveal the dual role of DIMT in fatigue crack growth through in situ observations. Two antagonistic fatigue mechanisms mediated by DIMT are identified, namely, transformation-mediated crack arresting, which prevents crack growth, and transformation-mediated crack coalescence, which promotes crack growth. Both mechanisms are due to the hardness and brittleness of martensite as a transformation product, rather than to the actual transformation process itself. In fatigue crack growth, the prevalence of one mechanism over the other critically depends on the crack size and the mechanical stability of the parent austenite phase. Elucidating the two mechanisms and their interplay allows for the microstructure design and safe use of metastable alloys that experience fatigue loads. The findings also generally reveal how metastable alloy microstructures must be designed for materials to be fatigue-resistant. © 2022 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

The deformation-induced phase transition from fcc to hcp causes local embrittlement of the metal matrix in Cobalt-base alloys, facilitating subcritical crack growth under cyclic loading and reducing fatigue resistance. Our approach to increasing the fatigue life of Co-based hard alloys is to suppress the phase transition from fcc to hcp by an alloy modification that increases the stacking fault energy (SFE) of the metal matrix. Therefore, we substitute various contents (15, 25, and 35 mass pct) of Co by Fe and analyze the effect on the fatigue life and resistance against subcritical crack growth. Subcritical crack growth in the specimens takes place in a cyclic load test. The proceeding crack growth and the occurrence of phase transformations are monitored by scanning electron microscope (SEM) investigations and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). We determined an SFE of 35 mJ/m2 at an iron content of 35 mass pct, which leads to a change of the main deformation mechanism from deformation-induced martensitic transformation to deformation twinning. Analysis of cyclically loaded specimens revealed that the resistance against subcritical crack growth in the metal matrix is facilitated with increasing Fe content, leading to a significant increase in fatigue life. © 2022, The Author(s).

We investigate the effect of low temperature (cryogenic) thermal cycling on dynamics of a generic model glass via molecular dynamics simulations. By calculating mean squared displacements after a varying number of cycles, a pronounced enhancement of dynamics is observed. This rejuvenation effect is visible already after the first cycle and accumulates upon further cycling in an intermittent way. Our data reveal an overall deformation (buckling of the slab-shaped system) modulated by a heterogeneous deformation field due to deep cryogenic thermal cycling. It is shown via strain maps that deformation localizes in the form of shear-bands, which gradually fill the entire sample in a random and intermittent manner, very much similar to the accumulation effect observed in dynamics. While spatial organization of local strain may be connected to the specific geometry, we argue that the heterogeneity of the structure is the main cause behind rejuvenation effects observed in the present study. © 2022 Author(s).

The influence of a deformable mirror on spatial light modulation in ultrafast lasers processing is demonstrated. The deformable mirror was integrated into an optical setup which contains an additional lens for generating a nearly linear focus shift in the focal plane behind the f-theta lens. The deformation of the mirror surface can be described by the Zernike terms Defocus, Astigmatism, and a combination of both, resulting in a cylindric lens behavior. The influence of the mirror surface deformation in this optical setup on the intensity distribution in the focal plane was simulated. From the simulation results, the caustic in the focal plane was calculated. The simulation results were compared to experiments using a picosecond laser with a maximum pulse energy of about 60 µJ. We demonstrate that the initial astigmatism of the raw beam can be reduced using the deformable mirror. A linear focus shift (R2=98.7%) and the generation of elliptical/ line intensity distributions are shown. Line intensity distribution was used to demonstrate slit drilling application in thin metal foils. © 2021

The modeling of damage processes in materials constitutes an ill-posed mathematical problem which manifests in mesh-dependent finite element results. The loss of ellipticity of the discrete system of equations is counteracted by regularization schemes of which the gradient enhancement of the strain energy density is often used. In this contribution, we present an extension of the efficient numerical treatment, which has been proposed by Junker et al. in 2019, to materials that are subjected to large deformations. Along with the model derivation, we present a technique for element erosion in the case of severely damaged materials. Efficiency and robustness of our approach is demonstrated by two numerical examples including snapback and springback phenomena. © 2021 The Authors. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The demand for safety and reliability in pipelines has been increasing steadily. Dual-phase steels, especially with a bainite matrix and a well-dispersed martensite–austenite constituent (MA), provide ingredients necessary for the improvement of the yield ratio and toughness. To design alloy elements and ensure that dual-phase steels have the required mechanical properties, an understanding of the governing microscopic deformation mechanisms is essential. For this purpose, multi-constitutive crystal plasticity simulation coupled with local strain/stress partitioning, ductile damage and transformation-induced plasticity evolution was employed. Microstructural cell responses were captured by fast Fourier transform crystal plasticity analysis. Representative microstructural patches with the same high spatial resolution as those obtained by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) tomography provide new insights into the deformation mechanism in dual-phase microstructures, especially regarding the effects of the matrix and secondary phase distribution on the strain, ductile damage and transformation localization behavior. © 2022 Japan Society for Technology of Plasticity. All rights reserved.

High-resolution three-dimensional crystal plasticity simulations are used to investigate deformation heterogeneity and microstructure evolution during cold rolling of interstitial free (IF-) steel. A Fast Fourier Transform (FFT)-based spectral solver is used to conduct crystal plasticity simulations using a dislocation-density-based crystal plasticity model. The in-grain texture evolution and misorientation spread are consistent with experimental results obtained using electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) experiments. The crystal plasticity simulations show that two types of strain localization features develop during the large strain deformation of IF-steel. The first type forms band-like areas with large strain accumulation that appear as river patterns extending across the specimen. In addition to these river-like patterns, a second type of strain localization with rather sharp and highly localized in-grain shear bands is identified. These localized features are dependent on the crystallographic orientation of the grain and extend within a single grain. In addition to the strain localization, the evolution of in-grain orientation gradients, misorientation features, dislocation density, kernel average misorientation, and stress in major texture components are discussed. © 2022 The Author(s)

Cementite (Fe3C) plays a major role in the tribological performance of rail and bearing steels. Nonetheless, the current understanding of its deformation behavior during wear is limited because it is conventionally embedded in a matrix. Here, we investigate the deformation and chemical evolution of bulk polycrystalline cementite during single-pass sliding at a contact pressure of 31 GPa and reciprocating multi-pass sliding at 3.3 GPa. The deformation behavior of cementite was studied by electron backscatter diffraction for slip trace analysis and transmission electron microscopy. Our results demonstrate activation of several deformation mechanisms below the contact surface: dislocation slip, shear band formation, fragmentation, grain boundary sliding, and grain rotation. During sliding wear, cementite ductility is enhanced due to the confined volume, shear/compression domination, and potentially frictional heating. The microstructural alterations during multi-pass wear increase the subsurface nanoindentation hardness by up to 2.7 GPa. In addition, we report Hägg carbide (Fe5C2) formation in the uppermost deformed regions after both sliding experiments. Based on the results of electron and X-ray diffraction, as well as atom probe tomography, we propose potential sources of excess carbon and mechanisms that promote the phase transformation. © 2022 The Author(s)

The mechanical behavior and deformation mechanisms of a body-centered cubic (BCC) Ti29Zr24Nb23Hf24 (at%) high entropy alloy (HEA) was investigated in temperatures and strain rates from 700° to 1100 °C and 10−3 to 10 s−1, respectively. The HEA exhibits a substantial increase in yield stress with increasing strain rate. The strain rate sensitivity (SRS) coefficient is ~3 times that of BCC alloy Nb-1Zr and even ~3.5 times that of pure Nb. This high SRS is attributed to the high Peierls stress of the HEA, which is about twice the Peierls stress of pure Nb. On the other hand, the flow stress exhibits a tendency from strain softening to strain hardening with the increase of strain rate especially at the relatively low temperatures. This behavior is explained by a change in dislocation motion from climbing to multiple slip with the increase of strain rate. Taking the specimen subjected to 800 ºC for example, dislocation walls formed at the early stage of deformation and at low strain rate of 10−3 s−1. In this case there is sufficient time to activate dislocations climb, which results in discontinuous dynamic recrystallization, and strain softening. However, when the strain rate amounts to 1 s−1, thermally activated processes such as dislocation climb are too sluggish. As a consequence, multiple slip systems are activated, and the dislocation interactions lead to the evolution of deformation bands, leading to strain hardening. © 2021 Elsevier B.V.

We report the cyclic deformation behavior of CoCrNi at 550 °C under a strain amplitude of ± 0.5% and compare it to that of CoCrFeMnNi. CoCrNi manifests cyclic hardening followed by minor softening and a near-steady state until failure. Transmission electron microscopy investigations of CoCrNi revealed that increasing the number of cycles from 10 to 2500/5000 leads to a transition of dislocation arrangements from slip bands to tangles. Compared to CoCrFeMnNi, CoCrNi exhibits higher strength, longer lifetime and persistent serrated flow. Owing to its lower stacking fault energy (even at 550 °C), planar slip is more pronounced in CoCrNi than CoCrFeMnNi, which additionally shows wavy slip. © 2022 Acta Materialia Inc.

We investigated the effects of interstitial N and C on the stacking fault energy (SFE) of an equiatomic CoCrNi medium entropy alloy. Results of computer modeling were compared to tensile deformation and electron microscopy data. Both N and C in solid solution increase the SFE of the face-centered cubic (FCC) alloy matrix at room temperature, with the former having a more significant effect by 240% for 0.5 at % N. Total energy calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) as well as thermodynamic modeling of the Gibbs free energy with the CALPHAD (CALculation of PHAse Diagrams) method reveal a stabilizing effect of N and C interstitials on the FCC lattice with respect to the hexagonal close-packed (HCP) CoCrNi-X (X: N, C) lattice. Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) measurements of the width of dissociated ½<110> dislocations suggest that the SFE of CoCrNi increases from 22 to 42–44 mJ·m−2 after doping the alloy with 0.5 at. % interstitial N. The higher SFE reduces the nucleation rates of twins, leading to an increase in the critical stress required to trigger deformation twinning, an effect which can be used to design load-dependent strain hardening response. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by National Institute for Materials Science in partnership with Taylor & Francis Group.

Results are presented reporting on the martensite domain variant selection and stress-induced martensite morphology in [001]-oriented superelastic Co49Ni21Ga30 shape memory alloy (SMA) single crystals under tensile load. In situ neutron diffraction, as well as in situ optical- and confocal laser scanning microscopy were conducted focusing on three differently treated samples, i.e. in the as-grown, solution-annealed and aged condition. An aging treatment performed at 350 °C promotes the precipitation of nanoprecipitates. These second phase precipitates contribute to an increase of the number of habit plane interfaces, while reducing lamellar martensite plate thickness compared to the as-grown and solution-annealed (precipitate free) samples. During tensile loading, all samples show a stress-induced formation of martensite, characterized by one single domain variant (“detwinned”) and one set of parallel habit planes in a shear band. The results clearly show that γ’ nanoprecipitates do not necessarily promote multi-variant interaction during tensile loading. Thus, reduced recoverability in Co-Ni-Ga SMAs upon aging cannot be solely attributed to this kind of interaction as has been proposed in literature so far. © 2022

Product quality and processing of additively manufactured concrete components strongly depend on the flow processes during material extrusion. To control layer deformations and enable purposeful design, numerical analyses with varying process and material parameters were performed to obtain a deeper understanding of flow processes and forces developing in the vicinity of the nozzle using the Lagrangian-based Particle Finite Element Method in association with a Bingham constitutive model. This model was validated by comparing the simulated layer geometries with those obtained from laboratory 3D-printing experiments. Within the investigated parameter range, the forces generated under the extrusion nozzle can be 6 times higher than those induced by self-weight and may cause deformations in substrate layers. Since the distribution of extrusion forces may change substantially under the nozzle for varying parameters, a novel indicator based on the yielding material is introduced to find optimal 3D-printing parameters to prevent plastic deformations in substrate layers. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.

During curing or hydration processes, materials such as polymers or fresh concrete undergo microstructural changes, which manifest themselves on the macroscopic scale as evolving material properties like strength or stiffness. Considering the increasing importance of additive manufacturing techniques using this type of “aging” materials, which typically undergo large deformations during the extrusion and deposition processes, a consistent finite strain model is required that takes evolving material properties and the proper characterization of the large deformation kinematics into account. In the proposed formulation, the problem of evolving stiffness is solved, in contrast to hypoelastic rate formulations typically used for this type of problems, by means of a multiplicative split of the deformation gradient into elastic and non-recoverable aging parts and the adoption of a hyperelastic potential. The existence of a hyperelastic potential is an advantage as it easily allows accounting for thermodynamic consistency. By introducing an internal aging parameter, a hyperelastic model based on principal logarithmic strains is adopted, to derive a novel and consistent evolution law for the aging part of the deformation gradient. The incremental and temporal discretization of the proposed constitutive model leads to a stress update scheme, which is reduced to a single multiplication of the principal logarithmic strains by a certain factor. As only minor adaptions are necessary, the proposed model is very attractive for implementations in already existing numerical models. In a benchmark study, the main aspects of the formulation are discussed, and the applicability of the proposed model is demonstrated by a computational analysis of a 3D printed concrete wall. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.

Nickel-based superalloys have a wide range of applications in high temperature and stress domains due to their unique mechanical properties. Under mechanical loading at high temperatures, rafting occurs, which reduces the service life of these materials. Rafting is heavily affected by the loading conditions associated with plastic strain; therefore, understanding plastic strain evolution can help understand these material's service life. This research classifies nickel-based superalloys with respect to creep strain with deep learning techniques, a technique that eliminates the need for manual feature extraction of complex microstructures. Phase-field simulation data that displayed similar results to experiments were used to build a model with pre-trained neural networks with several convolutional neural network architectures and hyper-parameters. The optimized hyper-parameters were transferred to scanning electron microscopy images of nickel-based superalloys to build a new model. This fine-tuning process helped mitigate the effect of a small experimental dataset. The built models achieved a classification accuracy of 97.74% on phase-field data and 100% accuracy on experimental data after fine-tuning. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.

In the present work, interactions of nanoindentation-induced dislocations (NIDs) with a low-angle grain boundary (LAGB) are investigated in a single-crystalline CrCoNi medium-entropy alloy (MEA). Microstructural evolutions before and after nanoindentation were examined using accurate electron channeling contrast imaging (A-ECCI). In the as-grown state, the alloy microstructure consists of subgrains separated by LAGBs. After nanoindentation on the (001) plane far away from LAGBs, the load-displacement curves exhibit the typical behavior of metals and alloys with a pop-in marking the elastic-plastic transition. This pop-in is related to the nucleation of NIDs that are observed to form pile-ups on {111} planes. In contrast, when indents are performed in the vicinity of a LAGB with a low misorientation angle of 0.24° and consisting of dislocations spaced ~60 nm apart, different micromechanical responses and deformation mechanisms are observed depending on the distance between the LAGB and the nanoindenter tip. When the distance between the LAGB and the nanoindenter tip is larger than four times the size of the indent (corresponding ratio: R > 4), the LAGB does not affect the micromechanical response nor interact with NIDs. In contrast, when the indenter comes in direct or indirect contact with the LAGB (R < 1), the load-displacement curve deviates at low loads from the elastic stage, and pop-ins are not observed. In this case, the continuous deformation is accommodated by the movement of the pre-existing LAGB dislocations. For intermediate cases with 1 < R < 4, the load of the initial pop-in is dependent on the local defect density. In this latter case, the pile-ups of NIDs directly impinge on the LAGB. Microstructural analyses reveal that the LAGB accommodates plasticity by blocking the NIDs, activating a dislocation nucleation site in the adjacent subgrain/emission of dislocation from the LAGB, and inducing slight motions of its constituent dislocations. © 2021 Elsevier B.V.

The plastic deformation behavior of single crystals of the quinary, equiatomic Cr−Mn−Fe−Co−Ni high-entropy alloy (HEA) with the face-centered cubic structure has been investigated in tension and compression as a function of crystal orientation and temperature from 10 K to 1373 K. The critical resolved shear stress (CRSS) for {111}<110> slip at room temperature is 42−45 MPa. It does not depend much on crystal orientation (i.e., the Schmid law holds true) and the sense (tension vs. compression) of the applied load. The CRSS for {111}<110> slip increases with the decrease in temperature, without showing any significant inertia effects at cryogenic temperatures below 77 K. Extrapolation from the measured yield stresses down to 10 K yields a CRSS value at 0 K of 168 MPa. At cryogenic temperatures, the measured strain-rate sensitivity of flow stress is consistent with a very small activation volume. The concept of stress equivalence holds true both for the temperature dependence of CRSS and the stress dependence of activation volume, indicating that solid-solution hardening is the major strengthening mechanism. Deformation twinning occurs at 77 K but not at room temperature, resulting in higher tensile elongation to failure at 77 K than at room temperature. Deformation twinning at 77 K occurs at a shear stress of 378 MPa on conjugate (1¯1¯1) planes in the form of Lüders deformation after large plastic strain (about 85%) achieved by the stage I (easy glide) and stage II (linear work-hardening) deformation. © 2020

The capability of high-resolution modeling of crystals subjected to large plastic strain is essential in predicting many important phenomena occurring in polycrystalline materials, such as microstructure, deformation localization and in-grain texture evolution. However, due to the heterogeneity of the plastic deformation in polycrystals, the simulation mesh gets distorted during the deformation. This mesh distortion deteriorates the accuracy of the results, and after reaching high local strain levels, it is no longer possible to continue the simulation. In this work, two different adaptive remeshing approaches are introduced for simulating large deformation of 3D polycrystals with high resolution under periodic boundary conditions. In the first approach, a new geometry with a new mesh is created, and then the simulation is restarted as a new simulation in which the initial state is set based on the last deformation state that had been reached. In the second approach, the mesh is smoothened by removing the distortion part of the deformation, and then the simulation is continued after finding a new equilibrium state for the smoothed mesh and geometry. The first method is highly efficient for conducting high-resolution large-deformation simulations. On the other hand, the second method's primary advantage is that it can overcome periodicity issues related to shear loading, and it can be used in conjunction with complex loading conditions. The merits of the methodologies are demonstrated using full-field simulations performed using a dislocation-density-based crystal plasticity model for Interstitial free (IF-) steel. Particular emphasis is put on studying the effect of resolution and adaptive meshing. The algorithms presented have been implemented into the free and open-source software package, DAMASK (Düsseldorf Advanced Material Simulation Kit). © 2021 The Author(s)

The interplay between ductile and brittle deformation modes in hard brittle materials exhibits a strong size effect. In the present work, indentation depth-dependent deformation mechanisms of single-crystal 3C-SiC under Berkovich nanoindentation are elucidated by finite element simulations and corresponding experiments. A novel finite element framework, that combines a crystal plasticity constitutive model for describing dislocation slip-based ductile deformation and a cohesive zone model for capturing crack initiation and propagation-induced brittle fracture, is established. The utilized parameters in the crystal plasticity model of 3C-SiC are calibrated according to the load-displacement curves obtained from corresponding Berkovich nanoindentation experiments. Subsequent finite element simulations and experiments of nanoindentation jointly reveal co-existing microscopic plastic deformation and brittle fracture of 3C-SiC at different indentation depths, which significantly affect the observed macroscopic mechanical response and surface pile-up topography. In particular, the predicted morphology of surface cracks at an indentation depth of 500 nm agrees well with experimental observation, and the correlation of crack initiation and propagation with surface pile-up topography is theoretically analyzed. © 2020 The Authors

We report on the low-cycle fatigue behavior of single-phase, face-centered cubic CoCrNi and CoCrFeMnNi at room temperature. Both alloys manifest cyclic hardening followed by softening and a near steady state until failure. CoCrNi exhibits higher strength, lower inelastic-strain, and longer lifetime than CoCrFeMnNi. For both alloys, microstructural investigations reveal no noticeable changes of texture, grain size and twin fraction. Nevertheless, CoCrNi exhibits planar dislocation structures, while CoCrFeMnNi shows well-defined wavy dislocation structures. This is due to CoCrNi lower stacking fault energy, which enhances planar slip and delays deformation localization leading to its superior fatigue resistance, compared to CoCrFeMnNi. © 2020

A splitting of the fundamental optical modes in micro- and nanocavities comprising semiconductor heterostructures is commonly observed. Given that this splitting plays a role in light-matter interaction and hence quantum technology applications, a method for controlling the mode splitting is useful. In this work we use an open microcavity composed of a "bottom"semiconductor distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) incorporating a n-i-p heterostructure, paired with a "top"curved dielectric DBR. We measure the mode splitting as a function of wavelength across the stopband. We demonstrate a reversible in situ technique to tune the mode splitting by applying uniaxial stress to the semiconductor DBR. The method exploits the photoelastic effect of the semiconductor materials. We achieve a maximum tuning of approximately 11 GHz. The stress applied to the heterostructure is determined by observing the photoluminescence of quantum dots embedded in the sample, converting a spectral shift to a stress via deformation potentials. A thorough study of the mode splitting and its tuning across the stopband leads to a quantitative understanding of the mechanism behind the results. © 2021 authors. Published by the American Physical Society.

A systematic study of the compression creep properties of a single-crystalline Co-base superalloy (Co-9Al-7.5W-2Ta) was conducted at 950, 975 and 1000°C to reveal the influence of temperature and the resulting diffusion velocity of solutes like Al, W and Ta on the deformation mechanisms. Two creep rate minima are observed at all temperatures indicating that the deformation mechanisms causing these minima are quite similar. Atom-probe tomography analysis reveals elemental segregation to stacking faults, which had formed in the γ′ phase during creep. Density-functional-theory calculations indicate segregation of W and Ta to the stacking fault and an associated considerable reduction of the stacking fault energy. Since solutes diffuse faster at a higher temperature, segregation can take place more quickly. This results in a significantly faster softening of the alloy, since cutting of the γ′ precipitate phase by partial dislocations is facilitated through segregation already during the early stages of creep. This is confirmed by transmission electron microscopy analysis. Therefore, not only the smaller precipitate fraction at higher temperatures is responsible for the worse creep properties, but also faster diffusion-assisted shearing of the γ′ phase by partial dislocations. The understanding of these mechanisms will help in future alloy development by offering new design criteria. © 2021

An equiatomic CrFeNi medium-entropy alloy (MEA) that constitutes a cornerstone of austenitic stainless steels and Fe-based superalloys is investigated. Anneals at various temperatures revealed that CrFeNi forms a stable face-centered cubic (FCC) solid solution above ~1223 K. Based on this result, this alloy was cold-worked and recrystallized between 1273 K and 1473 K to produce different grain sizes. Compression tests were carried out at 293 K to investigate grain boundary strengthening (Hall-Petch slope: 966 MPa µm1/2) and this contribution was then subtracted from the overall strength to reveal the intrinsic uniaxial lattice strength (80 MPa). Additional compression and tensile tests were performed between 77 K and 873 K to study the effect of temperature on mechanical properties and deformation mechanisms. Ductility, yield and ultimate tensile strengths increased with decreasing temperature. To reveal the active deformation mechanisms in CrFeNi with the coarsest grain size (160 µm), tensile tests at 77 K and 293 K were interrupted at different strains followed by transmission electron microscopy analyses. In all cases, the deformation was accommodated by dislocation glide at low strains, while twinning additionally occurred above a critical resolved shear stress of 165 MPa, which was roughly temperature independent. This value compares well with predictions (180 MPa) based on the Kibey's model for twin nucleation. Moreover, the fact that this value is roughly temperature-independent is also consistent with the Kibey's model since the twin nucleation barrier (unstable twin stacking fault energy) of FCC metals and alloys does not vary significantly with temperature. © 2020 Acta Materialia Inc.

Wear-related energy and material loss cost over 2500 Billion Euro per year. Traditional wisdom suggests that high-strength materials reveal low wear rates, yet, their plastic deformation mechanisms also influence their wear performance. High strength and homogeneous deformation behavior, which allow accommodating plastic strain without cracking or localized brittle fracture, are crucial for developing wear-resistant metals. Here, we present an approach to achieve superior wear resistance via in-situ formation of a strong and deformable oxide nanocomposite surface during wear, by reaction of the metal surface with its oxidative environment, a principle that we refer to as ‘reactive wear protection’. We design a TiNbZr-Ag alloy that forms an amorphous-crystalline oxidic nanocomposite surface layer upon dry sliding. The strong (2.4 GPa yield strength) and deformable (homogeneous deformation to 20% strain) nanocomposite surface reduces the wear rate of the TiNbZr-Ag alloy by an order of magnitude. The reactive wear protection strategy offers a pathway for designing ultra-wear resistant alloys, where otherwise brittle oxides are turned to be strong and deformable for improving wear resistance. © 2021, The Author(s).

Introducing regions of looser atomic packing in bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) was reported to facilitate plastic deformation, rendering BMGs more ductile at room temperature. Here, we present a different alloy design approach, namely, doping the nonmetallic elements to form densely packed motifs. The enhanced structural fluctuations in Ti-, Zr- and Cu-based BMG systems leads to improved strength and renders these solutes’ atomic neighborhoods more prone to plastic deformation at an increased critical stress. As a result, we simultaneously increased the compressive plasticity (from ∼8% to unfractured), strength (from ∼1725 to 1925 MPa) and toughness (from 87 ± 10 to 165 ± 15 MPa√m), as exemplarily demonstrated for the Zr20Cu20Hf20Ti20Ni20 BMG. Our study advances the understanding of the atomic-scale origin of structure-property relationships in amorphous solids and provides a new strategy for ductilizing BMG without sacrificing strength. © 2021, The Author(s).

Deformation-induced characteristics of surface layer strongly rely on loading condition-related operating deformation modes. In the current study we reveal the mechanisms governing machined surface formation of hard brittle monocrystalline 3C–SiC in ultrasonic elliptical vibration-assisted diamond cutting by molecular dynamics simulations. Simulation results show different deformation modes including phase transformation, dislocation activity, and crack nucleation and propagation, as well as their correlations with surface integrity in terms of machined surface morphology and subsurface damage. In particular, molecular dynamics simulations of ordinary cutting are also carried out, which demonstrate the effectiveness of applying ultrasonic vibration of cutting tool in decreasing machining force and suppressing crack events, i.e., promoting ductile-mode cutting for achieving high surface integrity. The physical mechanism governing the machining differences between the two machining processes are also revealed. Furthermore, the effect of cutting depth on machined surface integrity under vibration-assisted cutting and ordinary cutting is addressed. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd and Techna Group S.r.l.

The design of high performance structural materials is always pursuing combinations of excellent yet often mutually exclusive properties such as mechanical strength, ductility and thermal stability. Although crystal-glass composite alloys provide better ductility compared to fully amorphous alloys, their thermal stability is poor, due to heterogeneous nucleation at the crystal-glass interface. Here we present a new strategy to develop thermally stable, ultrastrong and deformable crystal-glass nanocomposites through a thermodynamically guided alloy design approach, which mimics the mutual stabilization principle known from symbiotic ecosystems. We realized this in form of a model Cr-Co-Ni (crystalline)/Ti-Zr-Nb-Hf-Cr-Co-Ni (amorphous) laminate composite alloy. The symbiotic alloy has an ultrahigh compressive yield strength of 3.6 GPa and large homogeneous deformation of ∼15% strain at ambient temperature, values which surpass those of conventional metallic glasses and nanolaminate alloys. Furthermore, the alloy exhibits ∼200 K higher crystallization temperature (TX > 973 K) compared to that of the original TiZrNbHf-based amorphous phase. The elemental partitioning among adjacent amorphous and crystalline phases leads to their mutual thermodynamic and mechanical stabilization, opening up a new symbiotic approach for stable, strong and ductile materials. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

This article integrates the truncated hierarchical B-spline into the material point method (MPM) to address the large deformation problem in geotechnical engineering. The proposed approach allows the MPM to work with a locally refined hierarchical background grid, by which computational resources could be concentrated in spatial domains of concern. The truncated hierarchical B-spline forms the partition of unity property throughout the computational domain by reducing the support of the basis functions on adjacent hierarchical levels. Two auxiliary data structures beneficial to the hierarchical particle-grid mappings are introduced to facilitate the implementation of the truncated hierarchical B-splines in the framework of MPM. In addition, a particle splitting strategy is employed to eliminate numerical fracture problems that may occur in the case of extremely large deformation. Validation and application examples demonstrate the robustness and stability of the proposed method. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Hole spins in semiconductors are a potential qubit alternative to electron spins. In nuclear-spin-rich host crystals like GaAs, the hyperfine interaction of hole spins with nuclei is considerably weaker than that for electrons, leading to potentially longer dephasing times. Here we demonstrate optical pumping and coherent population trapping for acceptor-bound holes in a strained GaAs epitaxial layer. We find μs-scale longitudinal spin relaxation time T1 and an inhomogeneous dephasing time T2∗ of ∼7 ns. We attribute the spin relaxation mechanism to the combined effect of a hole-phonon interaction through the deformation potentials, and heavy-hole-light-hole mixing in an in-plane magnetic field. We attribute the short T2∗ to g-factor broadening due to strain inhomogeneity. T1 and T2∗ are calculated based on these mechanisms and compared with the experimental results. While the hyperfine-mediated decoherence is mitigated, our results highlight the important contribution of strain to relaxation and dephasing of acceptor-bound hole spins. © 2021 American Physical Society.

The service performance of the turbine blade root of an aero-engine depends on the microstructures in its superficial layer. This work investigated the surface deformation structures of turbine blade root of single crystal nickel-based superalloy produced under different creep feed grinding conditions. Gradient microstructures in the superficial layer were clarified and composed of a severely deformed layer (DFL) with nano-sized grains (48-67 nm) at the topmost surface, a DFL with submicron-sized grains (66-158 nm) and micron-sized laminated structures at the subsurface, and a dislocation accumulated layer extending to the bulk material. The formation of such gradient microstructures was found to be related to the graded variations in the plastic strain and strain rate induced in the creep feed grinding process, which were as high as 6.67 and 8.17 × 107 s-1, respectively. In the current study, the evolution of surface gradient microstructures was essentially a transition process from a coarse single crystal to nano-sized grains and, simultaneously, from one orientation of a single crystal to random orientations of polycrystals, during which the dislocation slips dominated the creep feed grinding induced microstructure deformation of single crystal nickel-based superalloy. © 2021 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Understanding the orientation-dependent deformation behavior of NiTi shape-memory alloys at small length scales is of importance for designing nano- and micro-electromechanical systems. However, a complete understanding of the orientation- and size-dependent competition between the various modes of slip, deformation twinning, and martensitic transformation in NiTi shape-memory alloys is still lacking, especially in micron-scale specimens. In the present study, we perform micro-compression tests on [001]- and [112]-oriented micro-pillars of a solutionized Ti-49.9at.% Ni alloy. Post-mortem TEM analysis of the deformed pillars reveal that the operating plastic deformation modes are {011}<100> slip and {114}<221¯> deformation twinning, which compete with the martensitic transformation, depending on the crystal orientation. Furthermore, in both experiments and molecular dynamics simulations, we consistently find residual B19′ martensite in a herringbone microstructure composed of finely spaced (001)B19′ compound twins instead of the generally assumed [011]B19′ type II twins common in bulk samples, suggesting that the operative martensitic transformation mode may be size-dependent. Schmid factors in compression are calculated for all commonly reported slip, deformation twinning, and martensitic transformation modes as a function of crystallographic orientation, which rationalize the orientation-dependent competition between these deformation modes. © 2021 Acta Materialia Inc.

For additive manufacturing materials, different process parameters might cause non-negligible microstructural defects. Due to the deficient or surplus energy input during the process, porosity would result in significantly different mechanical responses. In addition, the heterogeneity of the microstructure of additive manufactured material could increase the anisotropic behavior in both deformation and failure stages. The aim of this study is to perform a numerical investigation of the anisotropic plasticity affected by the microstructural features, in particular, texture and porosity. The coupling of the synthetic microstructure model and the crystal plasticity method is employed to consider the microstructural features and to predict the mechanical response at the macroscopic level, including both flow curve and r-value evolution. The additive manufactured 316L stainless steel is chosen as the reference steel in this study. Porosity decreases the stress of material, however, it reduces the anisotropy of material with both two types of textures. Regardless of porosity, grains with <111>//BD fiber of reference material is preferable for high strength requirement while the random orientations are favorable for homogeneous deformation in applications. © ESAFORM 2021 - 24th Inter. Conf. on Mat. Forming. All rights reserved.

Experimentally revealing the nanometric deformation behavior of 3C-SiC is challenging due to its ultra-small feature size for brittle-to-ductile transition. In the present work, we elucidated the nanometric cutting mechanisms of 3C-SiC by performing in situ nanometric cutting experiments under scanning electron microscope (SEM), as well as post-characterization by electron back-scattered diffraction (EBSD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). In particular, a new method based on the combination of image processing technology and SEM online observation was proposed to achieve in situ measurement of cutting force with an uncertainty less than 1 mN. Furthermore, the cutting cross-section was characterized by atomic force microscope (AFM) to access the specific cutting energy. The results revealed that the specific cutting energy increase non-linearly with the decrease of cutting depth due to the size effect of cutting tool in nanometric cutting. The high-pressure phase transformation (HPPT) may play the major role in 3C-SiC ductile machining under the parameters of this experiment. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature.

Most oxide ceramics are known to be brittle macroscopically at room temperature with little or no dislocation-based plasticity prior to crack propagation. Here, we demonstrate the size-dependent brittle to ductile transition in SrTiO3 at room temperature using nanoindentation pop-in events visible as a sudden increase in displacement at nominally constant load. We identify that the indentation pop-in event in SrTiO3 at room temperature, below a critical indenter tip radius, is dominated by dislocation-mediated plasticity. When the tip radius increases to a critical size, concurrent dislocation activation and crack formation, with the latter being the dominating process, occur during the pop-in event. Beyond the experimental examination and theoretical justification presented on SrTiO3 as a model system, further validation on α-Al2O3, BaTiO3, and TiO2 are briefly presented and discussed. A new indentation size effect, mainly for brittle ceramics, is suggested by the competition between the dislocation-based plasticity and crack formation at small scale. Our finding complements the deformation mechanism in the nano-/microscale deformation regime involving plasticity and cracking in ceramics at room temperature to pave the road for dislocation-based mechanics and functionalities study in these materials. © 2021 The Authors. Journal of the American Ceramic Society published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Ceramic Society (ACERS)

Aiming at revealing plastic deformation mechanisms of nanoindentation tests, we investigate the crystallographic orientation-influenced indentation size effect in the Berkovich nanoindentation tests of single crystalline copper, by using the nonlocal crystal plasticity finite element approach and specifically designed experiments. In our simulation model of nanoindentation, a new geometrically necessary dislocation density-based crystal plasticity model is proposed, and the utilized model parameters are calibrated by fitting the measured load-displacement curves of indentation tests. Then the size of plastic zone of indentation tests is defined by the surface pile-up profile, i.e. the diameter of a circle consisting of material points with half of maximum pile-up height. It is found that the modified plastic zone model incorporated with the newly developed scaling factor provides good predication of the indentation depth-dependent hardness of single crystalline copper. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

The formation of κ-carbides in austenite Fe-30Mn-9Al-1.2C (wt. %) lightweight steels is tuned via alloying of Si (0, 1, 2 wt. %), an element that can remarkably raise the activities of Al and C based on thermodynamic calculations. Ordered L12 nano-domains (with a size <1 nm), lacking elemental partition, were observed in the solution-treated steel without Si alloying, while with the increase of Si to 2 wt. %, cuboidal L′12 intragranular κ-carbides were well developed with an average size of 11.5 nm and a volume fraction of 25.9 %. These κ-carbides found in the solution-treated steel with 2 wt. % Si follow a different precipitation route from previous pathways that require aging. Also, particle-shaped L′12 intergranular κ0-carbides and DO3 phase were formed at austenite grain boundaries in the steel with 2 wt. % Si. The precipitation of κ-carbides in grain interiors leads to an improvement of the yield strength from ~450 MPa to ~950 MPa as the Si content increases from 0 to 2 wt. %. The primary deformation mechanism is the formation of slip bands in all three steels, which involves the shear of ordered nano-domains or κ-carbides. The uniform distribution of the slip bands is essential for the high strain hardening, provided by the dynamic slip band refinement in the steel without Si. Lower strain hardening is seen in the steel with 2 wt. % Si due to the formation of localized coarse slip bands. These findings offer valuable insights into the design of high-performance lightweight steels. © 2020

The application of nanocrystalline (NC) materials at high temperatures is challenging due to their poor thermal stability or low creep resistance. Here we report that a thermally stable NC Fe-5 at.% Zr steel produced by High-Pressure-Thermal-Compression sintering exhibits an excellent creep resistance (with a creep rate of 3.92 × 10−8 s−1 at 923 K and under the applied stress of 250 MPa). The excellent creep resistance is ascribed to its highly stable NC structure stabilized by nano-sized precipitates. Mechanical testing suggests that the creep of the NC Fe-5 at.% Zr steel is controlled by dislocation activities rather than diffusion dominated mechanisms. © 2019

Recently 1:12 magnets of Sm-(Fe,V) have shown promising coercivities and the potential to be alternative rare-earth-lean permanent magnets. In this work, we investigated the effects of partial substitution of Cu, Mo and Ti for V in the magnets prepared by hot compaction and hot deformation of mechanically milled powders. The microstructure of the Sm-Fe-(V,Cu) and Sm-Fe-(V,Ti) hot-deformed magnets consisted in fine grains with sizes between 50 and 150 nm. The Sm-Fe-(V,Cu) magnet showed the best performance with μ0Hc=0.96 T, μ0Mr=0.49 T, (BH)max=42kJm−3 and TC=362∘C. Atom probe tomography of this magnet revealed the presence of a thin Sm17.5Fe71.5V8Cu3 intergranular phase of 3-6 nm surrounding the 1:12 nanograins. The addition of a small amount of Cu, not only improved the magnetic properties but also hindered the grain growth during hot deformation. Micromagnetic simulations of the magnetization reversal agreed with the experimental values of coercivity. The presence of the intergranular phase reduces the number of grains that switch simultaneously. © 2020 Acta Materialia Inc.

A topologically heterogeneous microstructure design is introduced in a Cu/Zr nanolayered composite, in which each soft 100 nm Cu or Zr layer is surrounded on both sides by several hard 10 nm Cu/Zr bilayers. This design aims to impose a full geometrical constraint on all of the soft layers. Micropillar compression tests demonstrate that the composite deforms in a compatible fashion among the layers, in which no extrusion of the soft layers occurs. An elevated strength of 730 MPa is achieved in the composite compared with the strength prediction based on the linear rule of mixtures. © 2020

Strong and ductile materials that have high resistance to corrosion and hydrogen embrittlement are rare and yet essential for realizing safety-critical energy infrastructures, hydrogen-based industries, and transportation solutions. Here we report how we reconcile these constraints in the form of a strong and ductile CoNiV medium-entropy alloy with face-centered cubic structure. It shows high resistance to hydrogen embrittlement at ambient temperature at a strain rate of 10−4 s−1, due to its low hydrogen diffusivity and the deformation twinning that impedes crack propagation. Moreover, a dense oxide film formed on the alloy’s surface reduces the hydrogen uptake rate, and provides high corrosion resistance in dilute sulfuric acid with a corrosion current density below 7 μA cm−2. The combination of load carrying capacity and resistance to harsh environmental conditions may qualify this multi-component alloy as a potential candidate material for sustainable and safe infrastructures and devices. © 2020, The Author(s).

We investigated the solute diffusional behavior active during compressive creep deformation at 150 MPa / 975 °C of a Co-Al-W-Ta single crystal superalloy in the [001] orientation. We report the formation of shear-bands that involves re-orientation of γ/γʹ rafts to {111} from {001} planes, referring to as γ/γ′ raft-rotation. In the shear-band regions, we observed abundant micro-twins, stacking faults (SFs), disordered zones within the γʹ termed as ‘γ pockets’ and also few geometrically-close-packed (GCP) phases. We used a correlative approach blending electron microscopy and atom probe tomography to characterize the structure and composition of these features. The SFs were identified as intrinsic and exhibit a W enrichment up to 14.5 at.% and an Al deficiency down to 5.1 at.%, with respect to the surrounding γʹ phase. The micro-twin boundaries show a solute enrichment similar to the SFs with a distinct W compositional profile gradients perpendicular from the boundaries into the twin interior, indicating solute diffusion within the micro-twins. The γ-pockets have a composition close to that of γ but richer in W/Ta. Based on these observations, we propose (i) a solute diffusion mechanism taking place during micro-twinning, (ii) a mechanism for the γ/γʹ raft-rotation process and evaluate their influence on the overall creep deformation of the present Co-based superalloy. © 2019

The evolution of dislocation density with creep strain in single-crystal superalloys is studied quantitatively using high-resolution electron backscatter diffraction (HR-EBSD) and electron channelling contrast imaging under controlled diffraction conditions (cECCI). Data regarding dislocation density/structure is measured for deformation at 900 °C and 450 MPa up to ≈ 1% plastic strain. Effects of chemical composition are elucidated via three purpose-designed superalloys of differing rhenium and ruthenium contents. The evidence indicates that dislocation avalanching is already prevalent at plastic strains of ≈ 0.1%; thereafter, an exponential decay in the dislocation multiplication rate is indicative of self-hardening due to dislocation constriction within the matrix channels, as confirmed by the imaging. The results are rationalised using discrete dislocation dynamics modelling: a universal dislocation evolution law emerges, which will be useful for alloy design efforts. © 2019

There is an increasing need for the development of novel technologies for tunnel construction in difficult geological conditions to protect segmental linings from unexpected large deformations. In the context of mechanized tunneling, one method to increase the damage tolerance of tunnel linings in such conditions is the integration of a compressible two-component grout for the annular gap between the segmental linings and the deformable ground. In this regard, expanded polystyrene (EPS) lightweight concrete/mortar has received increasing interest as a potential “candidate material” for the aforementioned application. In particular, the behavior of the EPS lightweight composites can be customized by modifying their pore structure to accommodate deformations due to specific geological conditions such as squeezing rocks. To this end, novel compressible cementitious EPS-based composite materials with high compaction potential have been developed. Specimens prepared from these composites have been subjected to compressive loads with and without lateral confinement. Based on these experimental data a computational model based on the Discrete Element Method (DEM) has been calibrated and validated. The proposed calibration procedure allows for modeling and prognosis of a wide variety of composite materials with a high compaction potential. The calibration procedure is characterized by the identification of physically quantifiable parameters and the use of phenomenological submodels. Model prognoses show excellent agreement with new experimental measurements that were not incorporated in the calibration procedure. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Laser shock peening with a femtosecond laser system was presented in this research work. The NiTi shape memory alloy was processed by the femtosecond laser shock peening (FsLSP) treatment without a protective layer in the air. Femtosecond laser shock peening is a new surface technology, which can induce an intense shock wave with low single laser pulse energy under atmospheric conditions. The surface topography, roughness, microhardness, and wear resistance were measured on the surface of NiTi alloy before and after femtosecond laser peening treatment. The results showed that the surface roughness and microhardness could be increased after femtosecond laser shock peening, which may be due to the laser ablation and micro-plastic deformation induced by the shock wave. The wear property of NiTi alloy was improved, which may be attributed to the FsLSPed surface texturing and enhancement of surface microhardness. © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

An equiatomic CoCrNi medium entropy alloy (MEA) with face-centered cubic (FCC) structure exhibits excellent combination of strength and ductility. Here we employ interstitial doping to enhance its mechanical performance. Interstitial CoCrNi MEAs with two different carbon contents, i.e., 0.5 at. % and 1 at. %, as well as a carbon-free CoCrNi reference MEA have been studied. The results show that up to 1 at. % carbon can be fully dissolved into the homogenized plus water-quenched FCC solid solution structure. Subsequent annealing leads to precipitation of nano-sized M23C6 type carbides which provide dispersion strengthening and enhanced strain hardening. The best combination of ultimate tensile strength of 1180 MPa at an elongation above 60% was obtained in fine grained CoCrNi doped with 0.5 at. % of carbon. Carbon alloying is also shown to significantly increase the lattice friction stress. Dislocation glide and mechanical twinning act as main deformation mechanisms. Thus, the joint contribution of multiple deformation mechanisms in the carbon-doped MEAs leads to significantly enhanced strength-ductility combinations compared to the carbon-free reference alloy, demonstrating that interstitial alloying can enhance the mechanical properties of MEAs. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

In the cold gas spray process, deposition of particles takes place through intensive plastic deformation upon impact in a solid state at temperatures well below their melting point. The high particle impact velocities and corresponding peening effects can lead to high compressive residual stresses in cold spray coatings. This can be advantageous with regard to mechanical properties as fatigue life and hence, cold spray is an ideal process for repair applications. In this study, INCONEL 718 particles were cold sprayed by using nitrogen as propellant gas. The deposited coatings with different thicknesses were characterized using electron microscopy techniques to study grain refinement and precipitates in the coating. In addition, depth-resolved residual stress measurements have been performed by the incremental hole drilling method. The residual stress depth profiles in the coatings indicate compressive residual stresses of several hundred MPa which are hardly influenced by the coating thickness. In addition, large compressive stress levels are found in surface-near regions of the substrate due to the grit blasting process. Furthermore, a post-heat treatment analysis was performed to investigate its influence on residual stresses and bonding strength. These findings are used to develop a consistent explanation of the dependence of strength values on thickness. © 2020, The Author(s).

The high-entropy alloy (HEA) concept was based on the idea that high mixing entropy can promote formation of stable single-phase microstructures. During the past 15 years, various alloy systems have been explored to identify HEA systems with improved property combinations, leading to an extraordinary growth of this field. In the large pool of alloys with varying characteristics, the first single-phase HEA with good tensile properties, the equiatomic CrMnFeCoNi alloy has become the benchmark material, and it forms the basis of much of our current fundamental understanding of HEA mechanical behavior. As the field is evolving to the more broadly defined complex concentrated alloys (CCAs) and the available data in the literature increase exponentially, a fundamental question remains unchanged: how special are these new materials? In the first part of this review, select mechanical properties of HEAs and CCAs are compared with those of conventional engineering alloys. This task is difficult because of the limited tensile data available for HEAs and CCAs. Additionally, the wider suite of mechanical properties needed to assess structural materials is woefully lacking. Nonetheless, our evaluations have not revealed many HEAs or CCAs with properties far exceeding those of conventional engineering alloys, although specific alloys can show notable enhancements in specific properties. Consequently, it is reasonable to first approach the understanding of HEAs and CCAs through the assessment of how the well-established deformation mechanisms in conventional alloys operate or are modified in the presence of the high local complexity of the HEAs and CCAs. The second part of the paper provides a detailed review of the deformation mechanisms of HEAs with the FCC and BCC structures. For the former, we chose the CrMnFeCoNi (Cantor) alloy because it is the alloy on which the most rigorous and thorough investigations have been performed and, for the latter, we chose the TiZrHfNbTa (Senkov) alloy because this is one of the few refractory HEAs that exhibits any tensile ductility at room temperature. As expected, our review shows that the fundamental deformation mechanisms in these systems, and their dependence on basic physical properties, are broadly similar to those of conventional FCC and BCC metals. The third part of this review examines the theoretical and modeling efforts to date that seek to provide either qualitative or quantitative understanding of the mechanical performance of FCC and BCC HEAs. Since experiments reveal no fundamentally new mechanisms of deformation, this section starts with an overview of modeling perspectives and fundamental considerations. The review then turns to the evolution of modeling and predictions as compared to recent experiments, highlighting both successes and limitations. Finally, in spite of some significant successes, important directions for further theory development are discussed. Overall, while the individual deformation mechanisms or properties of the HEAs and CCAs are not, by and large, “special” relative to conventional alloys, the present HEA rush remains valuable because the compositional freedom that comes from the multi-element space will allow exploration of whether multiple mechanisms can operate sequentially or simultaneously, which may yet lead to the creation of new alloys with a spectrum of mechanical properties that are significantly superior to those of current engineering alloys. © 2019 Acta Materialia Inc.

Interatomic potentials are essential for studying fundamental mechanisms of deformation and failure in metals and alloys because the relevant defects (dislocations, cracks, etc.) are far above the scales accessible to first-principles studies. Existing potentials for non-fcc metals and nearly all alloys are, however, not sufficiently quantitative for many crucial phenomena. Here machine learning in the Behler-Parrinello neural-network framework is used to create a broadly applicable potential for pure hcp magnesium (Mg). Lightweight Mg and its alloys are technologically important while presenting a diverse range of slip systems and crystal surfaces relevant to both plasticity and fracture that present a significant challenge for any potential. The machine learning potential is trained on first-principles density-functional theory (DFT) computable metallurgically relevant properties and is then shown to well predict metallurgically crucial dislocation and crack structures and competing phenomena. Extensive comparisons to an existing very good modified embedded atom method potential are made. These results demonstrate that a single machine learning potential can represent the wide scope of phenomena required for metallurgical studies. The DFT database is openly available for use in any other machine learning method. The method is naturally extendable to alloys, which are necessary for engineering applications but where ductility and fracture are controlled by complex atomic-scale mechanisms that are not well predicted by existing potentials. © 2020 American Physical Society.

Perfect slip transfer through single coherent Σ3 twin boundaries is known to be a cross-slip-like mechanism occurring at low stresses, which is expected to strongly depend on material properties like stacking fault energy. In the present study, we extend the argument of perfect slip transfer to (i) multiple closely spaced coherent twin boundaries in a nanotwinned thin film and (ii) to materials with very low stacking fault energy. The slip transfer is indicated by the continuity of slip steps and observed across up to 100 coherent Σ3 boundaries. The study addresses size scaling due to multiple weak obstacles for dislocation motion and discusses the underlying deformation mechanisms. The importance of strain compatibility is further extended to incoherent twin boundaries. © 2019

The risk of hydrogen embrittlement (HE) is currently one important factor impeding the use of medium Mn steels. However, knowledge about HE in these materials is sparse. Their multiphase microstructure with highly variable phase conditions (e.g. fraction, percolation and dislocation density) and the feature of deformation-driven phase transformation render systematic studies of HE mechanisms challenging. Here we investigate two austenite-ferrite medium Mn steel samples with very different phase characteristics. The first one has a ferritic matrix (~74 vol.% ferrite) with embedded austenite and a high dislocation density (~1014 m−2) in ferrite. The second one has a well recrystallized microstructure consisting of an austenitic matrix (~59 vol.% austenite) and embedded ferrite. We observe that the two types of microstructures show very different response to HE, due to fundamental differences between the HE micromechanisms acting in them. The influence of H in the first type of microstructure is explained by the H-enhanced local plastic flow in ferrite and the resulting increased strain incompatibility between ferrite and the adjacent phase mixture of austenite and strain-induced α'-martensite. In the second type of microstructure, the dominant role of H lies in its decohesion effect on phase and grain boundaries, due to the initially trapped H at the interfaces and subsequent H migration driven by deformation-induced austenite-to-martensite transformation. The fundamental change in the prevalent HE mechanisms between these two microstructures is related to the spatial distribution of H within them. This observation provides significant insights for future microstructural design towards higher HE resistance of high-strength steels. © 2019

We reveal the impact of magnetic ordering on stacking fault energy (SFE) and its influence on the deformation mechanisms and mechanical properties in a class of nonequiatomic quinary Mn-containing compositional complex alloys or high entropy alloys (HEAs). By combining ab initio simulation and experimental validation, we demonstrate magnetic ordering as an important factor in the activation and transition of deformation modes from planar dislocation slip to TWIP (twinning-induced plasticity) and/or TRIP (transformation-induced plasticity). A wide compositional space of Cr20MnxFeyCo20Niz(x+y+z=60, at. %) was probed by density-functional theory calculations to search for potential alloys displaying the TWIP/TRIP effects. Three selected promising HEA compositions with varying Mn concentrations were metallurgically synthesized, processed, and probed for microstructure, deformation mechanism, and mechanical property evaluation. The differences in the deformation modes of the probed HEAs are interpreted in terms of the computed SFEs and their dependence on the predicted magnetic state, as revealed by ab initio calculations and validated by explicit magnetic measurements. It is found that the Mn content plays a key role in the stabilization of antiferromagnetic configurations which strongly impact the SFEs and eventually lead to the prevalent deformation behavior. © 2020 authors. Published by the American Physical Society.

The current work compares the deformation behavior of CoCrFeMnNi and CoCrNi in the temperature interval between 295 K and 8 K through a series of quasi-static tensile tests. Temperature-dependent yield stress variation was found to be similarly high in these two alloys. Previous investigations only extended down to 77 K and showed that a small amount of ε-martensite was formed in CoCrNi while this phase was not observed in CoCrFeMnNi. The present study extends these investigations down to 8 K where similar low levels of ε-martensite were presently detected. Based on this result, a rough assessment has been made estimating the importance of deformation twinning to the strength. The relative work hardening rates of CoCrFeMnNi and CoCrNi were comparable in value despite the differences in ε-martensite formation during deformation. CoCrFeMnNi deforms by dislocation slip and deformation twinning while deformation in CoCrNi is also accommodated by the formation of ε-martensite at cryogenic temperatures. Additionally, CoNi, a solid solution from the Co–Cr–Fe–Mn–Ni system with low strength, was used for comparison, showing contrasting deformation behavior at cryogenic temperatures. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

This is a viewpoint paper on recent progress in the understanding of the microstructure–property relations of advanced high-strength steels (AHSS). These alloys constitute a class of high-strength, formable steels that are designed mainly as sheet products for the transportation sector. AHSS have often very complex and hierarchical microstructures consisting of ferrite, austenite, bainite, or martensite matrix or of duplex or even multiphase mixtures of these constituents, sometimes enriched with precipitates. This complexity makes it challenging to establish reliable and mechanism-based microstructure–property relationships. A number of excellent studies already exist about the different types of AHSS (such as dual-phase steels, complex phase steels, transformation-induced plasticity steels, twinning-induced plasticity steels, bainitic steels, quenching and partitioning steels, press hardening steels, etc.) and several overviews appeared in which their engineering features related to mechanical properties and forming were discussed. This article reviews recent progress in the understanding of microstructures and alloy design in this field, placing particular attention on the deformation and strain hardening mechanisms of Mn-containing steels that utilize complex dislocation substructures, nanoscale precipitation patterns, deformation-driven transformation, and twinning effects. Recent developments on microalloyed nanoprecipitation hardened and press hardening steels are also reviewed. Besides providing a critical discussion of their microstructures and properties, vital features such as their resistance to hydrogen embrittlement and damage formation are also evaluated. We also present latest progress in advanced characterization and modeling techniques applied to AHSS. Finally, emerging topics such as machine learning, through-process simulation, and additive manufacturing of AHSS are discussed. The aim of this viewpoint is to identify similarities in the deformation and damage mechanisms among these various types of advanced steels and to use these observations for their further development and maturation. © 2020, The Author(s).

Conventionally produced tungsten (W) sheets are brittle at room temperature. In contrast to that, severe deformation by cold rolling transforms W into a material exhibiting room-temperature ductility with a brittle-to-ductile transition (BDT) temperature far below room temperature. For such ultrafine-grained (UFG) and dislocation-rich materials, the mechanism controlling the BDT is still the subject of ongoing debates. In order to identify the mechanism controlling the BDT in room-temperature ductile W sheets with UFG microstructure, we conducted campaigns of fracture toughness tests accompanied by a thermodynamic analysis deducing Arrhenius BDT activation energies. Here, we show that plastic deformation induced by rolling reduces the BDT temperature and also the BDT activation energy. A comparison of BDT activation energies with the trend of Gibbs energy of kink-pair formation revealed a strong correlation between both quantities. This demonstrates that out of the three basic processes, nucleation, glide, and annihilation, crack tip plasticity in UFG W is still controlled by the glide of dislocations. The glide is dictated by the mobility of the screw segments and therefore by the underlying process of kink-pair formation. Reflecting this result, a change of the rate-limiting mechanism for plasticity of UFG W seems unlikely, even at deformation temperatures well below room temperature. As a result, kink-pair formation controls the BDT in W over a wide range of microstructural length scales, from single crystals and coarse-grained specimens down to UFG microstructures. © 2020, The Author(s).

Microstructural deformation at the grain level has an inherent impact on the achievable ultimate machining accuracy of polycrystalline materials. In the present work, numerical simulations and experiments of diamond cutting of polycrystalline copper are carried out to investigate the formation of surface step at grain boundaries on machined surface. Single crystal diamond cutting tool with straight cutting edge is chosen for experiments to mimic the tool geometry utilized in 2D crystal plasticity finite element simulations. Moreover, the same crystallography configuration of bi-crystal Cu is employed between experiments and simulations. Formation mechanisms of surface steps at grain boundaries are revealed by finite element simulations and corresponding experimental validation, as well as cross-sectional transmission electron microscope characterization. Finally, finite element simulations of orthogonal cutting of bi-crystal Cu are carried out to examine effects of both extrinsic cutting edge radius of diamond cutting tool and intrinsic misorientation angle of grain boundary on the propensity of grain boundary surface step formation. The present work provides theoretical guidelines on the strategy of suppressing grain boundary surface step formation for achieving superior surface finish of polycrystalline materials by diamond cutting. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

In this work, we study the influence of hydrogen on the deformation behavior and microstructure evolution in an equiatomic CoCrNi medium entropy alloy (MEA) with an ultimate tensile strength of ∼1 GPa. Upon deformation, hydrogen-charged samples exhibit enhanced dislocation activity and nanotwinning. Hydrogen shows both positive and negative effects on the deformation behavior of the CoCrNi MEA. More specifically, it weakens grain boundaries during loading, leading to intergranular cracking. Also, it promotes the formation of twins which enhance the material's resistance to crack propagation. The underlying mechanisms responsible for the hydrogen resistance of the CoCrNi MEA are discussed in detail. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

45° rafting of Ni-based superalloys has been investigated with the help of creep test simulations applying a strain gradient crystal plasticity model coupled to the multi-phase field method. This mode of rafting lies in between P- A nd N-type rafting modes. The model parameters are calibrated against experimental data for N-type rafting under high temperature and low stress creep condition. By increasing the stress level, the mixed-mode rafting of precipitates with a clear tendency toward formation of 45° rafts is observed. We show that the key factor for the occurrence of this type of rafting is the generation of highly localized creep strain of more than 10% due to non-homogeneous creep deformation in the form of slip bands. We have successfully captured the evolution of microstructure under high stress leading to production of localized shear bands. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd.

This study concentrates on several factors which govern the nanoscale plasticity of in situ compressed dislocation-free Ni3 Al nanocubes: cube size, aspect ratio and the presence of grooves. The yield strength of dislocation-free Ni3 Al nanocubes exhibits an apparent size dependence. The size dependence is strong when cubes are smaller than 300 nm. Compared with the strength of bulk Ni3 Al single crystals, the strength of nanocubes is two orders of magnitude higher, which clearly demonstrates that there is a size effect. Nanocube plasticity strongly depends on the alignment and the shape of the cubes. Deformed aligned nanocubes either display only a few localized deformation events (slip lines) or were homogenously compressed into flats due to multiple slip dislocation-mediated plasticity. For an aligned cube, crack initiation at the intersection of a slip line with a groove in the cube surface was observed. In case of a double cube, crack initiation occurs at surface irregularities, while subsequent crack propagation occurs along one or more slip planes. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

High-entropy alloys (HEAs) and metallic glasses (MGs) are two material classes based on the massive mixing of multiple-principal elements. HEAs are single or multiphase crystalline solid solutions with high ductility. MGs with amorphous structure have superior strength but usually poor ductility. Here, the stacking fault energy in the high-entropy nanotwinned crystalline phase and the glass-forming-ability in the MG phase of the same material are controlled, realizing a novel nanocomposite with near theoretical yield strength (G/24, where G is the shear modulus of a material) and homogeneous plastic strain above 45% in compression. The mutually compatible flow behavior of the MG phase and the dislocation flux in the crystals enable homogeneous plastic co-deformation of the two regions. This crystal–glass high-entropy nanocomposite design concept provides a new approach to developing advanced materials with an outstanding combination of strength and ductility. © 2020 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

The compressive creep of silicon carbide fiber reinforced Ti3SiC2 MAX phase with both fine and coarse microstructure was investigated in the temperature range of 1000-1300°C. Comparison of only steady-state creep was done to understand the response of fabricated composite materials toward creep deformation. It was demonstrated that the fibers are more effective in reducing the creep rates for the coarse microstructure by an increase in activation energy compared to the variant with a finer microstructure, being partly a result of the enhanced creep rates for the microstructure with larger grain size. Grain boundary sliding along with fiber fracture appears to be the main creep mechanism for most of the tested temperature range. However, there are indications for a changed creep mechanism for the fine microstructure for the lowest testing temperature. Local pores are formed to accommodate differences in strain related to creeping matrix and predominantly elastically deformed fibers during creep. Microstructural analysis was done on the material before and after creep to understand the deformation mechanics. © 2020 The Authors. Journal of the American Ceramic Society published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Ceramic Society (ACERS)

Molecular dynamics simulations are performed to investigate the impact of a coherent Σ3 (111) twin boundary on the plastic deformation behavior of Cu nanopillars. Our work reveals that the mechanical response of pillars with and without the twin boundary is decisively driven by the characteristics of initial dislocation sources. In the condition of comparably large pillar size and abundant initial mobile dislocations, overall yield and flow stresses are controlled by the longest, available mobile dislocation. An inverse correlation of the yield and flow stresses with the length of the longest dislocation is established and compared to experimental data. The experimentally reported subtle differences in yield and flow stresses between pillars with and without the twin boundary are likely related to the maximum lengths of the mobile dislocations. In the condition of comparably small pillar size, for which a reduction of mobile dislocations during heat treatment and mechanical loading occurs, the mechanical response of pillars with and without the twin boundary can be clearly distinguished. Dislocation starvation during deformation is more pronounced in pillars without the twin boundary than in pillars with the twin boundary because the twin boundary acts as a pinning surface for the dislocation network. © 2020 Acta Materialia Inc.

Extended diffusion layers of the cubic C15 and hexagonal C14 and C36 NbCo2 Laves phases with concentration gradients covering their entire homogeneity ranges were produced by the diffusion couple technique. Single-phase and single-crystalline micropillars of the cubic and hexagonal NbCo2 Laves phases were prepared in the diffusion layers by focused ion beam (FIB) milling. The influence of chemical composition, structure type, orientation and pillar size on the deformation behavior and the critical resolved shear stress (CRSS) was studied by micropillar compression tests. The pillar orientation influences the activated slip systems, but the deformation behavior and the CRSS are independent of orientation. The deformation of the smallest NbCo2 micropillars (0.8 µm in top diameter) appears to be dislocation nucleation controlled and the CRSS approaches the theoretical shear stress for dislocation nucleation. The CRSS of the 0.8 µm-sized NbCo2 micropillars is nearly constant from 26 to 34 at.% Nb where the C15 structure is stable. It decreases as the composition approaches the Co-rich and Nb-rich boundaries of the homogeneity range where the C15 structure transforms to the C36 and the C14 structure, respectively. The decrease in the CRSS at these compositions is related to the reduction of shear modulus and stacking fault energy. As the pillar size increases, stochastic deformation behavior and large scatter in the CRSS values occur and obscure the composition effect on the CRSS. © 2019

Amorphization plays an important role in ceramic deformation under mechanical loading. In the present work, we investigate the elasto-plastic deformation mechanisms of monocrystalline cubic silicon carbide (3C–SiC) in spherical nanoindentation by means of molecular dynamics simulations. The indentation-induced amorphization and its interactions with other deformation modes are emphasized. Initially, the suitable empirical potential capable of accurately characterizing the mechanical and defect properties of monocrystalline 3C–SiC, as well as the propensity of phase transformation from 3C–SiC to amorphous SiC, is rationally selected by benchmarking of different empirical potentials with experimental data and density functional theory calculations. Subsequently, the inhomogeneous elastic-plastic transitions during nanoindentation of monocrystalline 3C–SiC, as well as their dependence on crystallographic orientation, are investigated. Phase transformations including amorphization are analyzed using combined methods based on radial distribution function and bond angle distribution. Our simulation results demonstrate that before plasticity initiation-related “pop-in” event, each indented-monocrystalline 3C–SiC experiences a pure quasi-elastic deformation governed by the formation of amorphous structures. And this process of amorphization is fully reversible for small indentation depths. Further amorphization and dislocation nucleation jointly dominate the incipient plasticity in 3C–SiC nanoindentation. It is found that the indentation-induced defect zone composed of amorphous phase and dislocations is more pronounced in 3C–SiC(010) than that in the other two orientations of (110) and (111). © 2020 Elsevier Ltd and Techna Group S.r.l.

Designing structured materials with optimized mechanical properties generally focuses on engineering microstructures, which are closely determined by the processing routes, such as phase transformations. However, the direct connection between phase transformations and mechanical properties remains largely unexplored. Here, we propose a new concept of generalized stability (GS) to correlate phase transformations with plastic deformations in terms of the trade-off relationship that exists between thermodynamics and kinetics. We then suggest that, to achieve structured materials with excellent strength–plasticity combinations, phase transformations and/or plastic deformations with high GS, thermodynamic driving force (ΔG), and kinetic activation energy (Q), are highly expected. We verify the GS concept against a phase transformation-modulated nanostructured Fe alloy, for which an ultrahigh yield strength of 2.61 GPa and an ultimate compressive strength of 3.32 GPa while having a total strain to failure of 35% are achieved via multiple strengthening and hardening mechanisms. A theoretical analysis, in combination with microstructural characterization, indicates that the desired thermo-kinetic parameter triplets (i.e., high GS-high ΔG-high Q) could be inherited from the phase transformation to the plastic deformation, which ultimately yields good mechanical performance. The proposed concept can be regarded as the first theoretical criterion or a general rule that correlates phase transformation with plastic deformation, and can assist in the rapid selection of phase transformations to facilitate superior mechanical properties. © 2020

An in-situ high resolution digital image correlation investigation during uniaxial tensile deformation reveals the recoverable and the non-recoverable strain mechanisms in a Ni51Ti49 alloy with a mean grain size of 35 μm. Recoverable strain is due to the martensitic transformation, for which more than one variant per grain can be activated. The majority of the activated variants exhibit high Schmid factor. The variant selection can be influenced by shear transmission across grain boundaries, when the geometrical compatibility between the neighboring habit plane variants is favourable; in these cases variants that do not have the highest Schmid factor, with respect to the macroscopically applied load, are activated. The experimentally determined transformation strains agree well with theoretical calculations for single crystals. The non-recoverable strain is due to deformation slip in austenite, twinning in martensite and residual martensite. The results are discussed in view of possible twinning modes that can occur in austenite resulting in significant non-recoverable strain. © 2020 The Authors

Deformation behavior of concretes with high plastic compressibility. For special applications, for example compressible layers in tunnel constructions, there are already initial approaches for mortars and concretes, which are characterized by a high plastic compressibility. This paper describes experiments on the compressive behavior of highly porous concretes with low compressive strength (< 5 N/mm2) under transverse strain constraint. Concretes with different compressible additives (expanded glass / EPS) and various water-cement ratios were considered in the tests. Furthermore, the deformation behavior under both partial- and full-area loading was investigated in order to cover different application-related boundary conditions. On the basis of the determined stress-deformation curves as well as investigations on the structure of specimens before and after the compression tests essential findings on the compressive behavior of the concretes could be gained and material- and test-related parameters could be identified. © 2020, Ernst und Sohn. All rights reserved.

Interfaces play a significant role in the deformation behaviour of lamellar two-phase TiAl alloys and contribute to their increased strength. We study the deformation behaviour of α2/γ bilayers with either coherent or semicoherent interfaces, using atomistic simulations. We identify the nucleation sites for dislocations and decouple the effects of the microstructural parameters volume fraction and layer thickness on the yield stress and strain. Uniaxial tensile tests are carried out on bi-layer specimens with α2 and γ phases along directions parallel and perpendicular to the interface. Coherent α2∕γ bi-layers show residual stresses due to lattice mismatch which are linearly related to the volume fractions of the phases. These residual stresses, superimposed with tensile stresses during loading, lead to early yielding of the γ phase. In contrast, a semi-coherent interface leads to negligible residual stresses, but contains misfit dislocations which create localized stresses within the γ layer and thus contributes to dislocation nucleation. We show that along loading directions parallel to the interface, the layer thickness does not affect the deformation behaviour, irrespective of the type of interface, instead volume fraction is the governing parameter. When loading perpendicular to the interface, the absolute layer thickness does not affect the deformation behaviour of a bi-layer with a coherent interface, but determines the yield stress and strain in case of a semi coherent interface. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

We report atomic structures and chemical compositions of defects associated to planar faults in a creep deformed Co-base superalloy and discuss their formation and contribution to plastic deformation. The multinary single crystalline Co-base superalloy was creep deformed under tension along [ 001 ] -direction at 850 °C and 400 MPa. The creep microstructure comprises a high density of planar defects. Solute segregation to superlattice intrinsic stacking faults (SISF) is characterized via EDXS analysis of a statistically relevant number of faults and compared at different creep stages. The amount of solute segregation shows negligible difference at different creep stages indicating that segregation directly occurs during planar fault formation and does not significantly evolve afterward. Based on the observation and analysis of Frank partial dislocations with a/3⟨111⟩ Burgers vectors terminating SISF, we discuss a new route to SISF formation via dislocation climb. Additionally, two more complex fault structures are analyzed, and potential formation mechanisms are discussed. The first of these structures is a terminating end of an SISF where an a/3⟨112⟩ partial dislocation splits up into two closely spaced a/6⟨112⟩ partials separated by an SESF. The second structure consists of two parallel SISFs connected by an anti-phase boundary (APB). All deformation mechanisms described in this study show an involvement of solute segregation directly affecting formation and propagation of creep defects by changing planar fault energies and chemical environments of dislocations. Solute segregation is therefore expected to be a key to future alloy design by enabling control of creep deformation mechanisms in specific temperature and stress regimes. © 2020, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society.

The compressive creep of a SiC whisker (SiCw) reinforced Ti3SiC2 MAX phase-based ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) was studied in the temperature range 1100-1300°C in air for a stress range 20-120 MPa. Ti3SiC2 containing 0, 10, and 20 vol% of SiCw was sintered by spark plasma sintering (SPS) for subsequent creep tests. The creep rate of Ti3SiC2 decreased by around two orders of magnitude with every additional 10 vol% of SiCw. The main creep mechanisms of monolithic Ti3SiC2 and the 10% CMCs appeared to be the same, whereas for the 20% material, a different mechanism is indicated by changes in stress exponents. The creep rates of 20% composites tend to converge to that of 10% at higher stress. Viscoplastic and viscoelastic creep is believed to be the deformation mechanism for the CMCs, whereas monolithic Ti3SiC2 might have undergone only dislocation-based deformation. The rate controlling creep is believed to be dislocation based for all the materials which is also supported by similar activation energies in the range 650-700 kJ/mol. © 2020 The Authors. Journal of the American Ceramic Society published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Ceramic Society (ACERS)The Authors. Journal of the American Ceramic Society published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Ceramic Society (ACERS)

In conventional metallic materials, strength and ductility are mutually exclusive, referred to as strength-ductility trade-off. Here, we demonstrate an approach to improve the strength and ductility simultaneously by introducing micro-banding and the accumulation of a high density of dislocations in single-phase high-entropy alloys (HEAs). We prepare two compositions (Cr10Mn50Fe20Co10Ni10 and Cr10Mn10Fe60Co10Ni10) with distinctive different stacking fault energies (SFEs) as experimental materials. The strength and ductility of the Cr10Mn50Fe20Co10Ni10 HEA are improved concurrently by grain refinement from 347.5 ± 216.1 µm to 18.3 ± 9.3 µm. The ultimate tensile strength increases from 543 ± 4 MPa to 621 ± 8 MPa and the elongation to failure enhances from 43±2% to 55±1%. To reveal the underlying deformation mechanisms responsible for such a strength-ductility synergy, the microstructural evolution upon loading is investigated by electron microscopy techniques. The dominant deformation mechanism observed for the Cr10Mn50Fe20Co10Ni10 HEA is the activation of micro-bands, which act both as dislocation sources and dislocation barriers, eventually, leading to the formation of dislocation cell structures. By decreasing grain size, much finer dislocation cell structures develop, which are responsible for the improvement in work hardening rate at higher strains (>7%) and thus for the increase in both strength and ductility. In order to drive guidelines for designing advanced HEAs by tailoring their SFE and grain size, we compute the SFEs of Cr10MnxFe70–xCo10Ni10 (10 ≤ x ≤ 60) based on first principles calculations. Based on these results the overall changes on deformation mechanism can be explained by the influence of Mn on the SFE. © 2019 Acta Materialia Inc.

The mechanical properties of high-entropy alloys (HEAs) are still not deeply understood. Detailed knowledge of the strengthening mechanism, especially, the atomistic origin of solid solution hardening and its interplay with dislocation plasticity is needed. Here, we report on the dislocation glide behavior of a FeCoCrNiMn face-centered cubic (FCC) single crystal studied by in situ deformation in a transmission electron microscope (TEM). The threshold shear stress for dislocation glide in a thin foil is measured from dislocation curvature as exceeding 400 MPa. Interestingly, dislocations are prevented from straightening upon unloading due to high frictional stresses. IMPACT STATEMENT: The fiction stress for dislocation glide in a FeCoCrMnNi HEA is assessed by direct measurement of dislocation line curvature during in situ TEM deformation, which is higher compared to other FCC metals, explaining the outstanding yield and flow stress of the HEA. © 2020, © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Wafer curvature measurements reported in literature for polycrystalline (often textured) and epitaxial fcc metal thin films on hard substrates show a characteristic “signature” in the stress-temperature evolution for either type of films. While epitaxial films reveal characteristic elastic – ideal plastic deformation with no dislocation storage and highly repeatable cycles, polycrystalline films show considerable hardening upon cooling in addition to the relaxation by diffusional creep at elevated temperatures. In the present study, we study the deformation characteristics of an electron beam deposited epitaxial nanotwinned Ag on Si (111) substrate. The twin spacing λ of the nanotwinned Ag is controlled by suitable heat treatment and the “signature” thermomechanical deformation curves by wafer curvature measurements are recorded for twin spacings varying from 20 nm to 1 μm. Further, deformation is compared to other small scale deformation studies on fcc metals such as epitaxial bicrystal films, bicrystal micropillars containing a coherent twin boundary and nanotwinned micropillars. © 2020

The present work contributes to a better understanding of the effect of stress multiaxiality on the creep behavior of single crystal Ni-base superalloys. For this purpose we studied the creep deformation and rupture behavior of double notched miniature creep tensile specimens loaded in three crystallographic directions [100], [110] and [111] (creep conditions: 950 °C and 400 MPa net section stress). Crystal plasticity finite element method (CPFEM) was used to analyze the creep stress and strain distributions during creep. Double notched specimens have the advantage that when one notch fails, the other is still intact and allows to study a material state which is close to rupture. No notch root cracking was observed, while microstructural damage (pores and micro cracks) were frequently observed in the center of the notch root region. This is in agreement with the FEM results (high axial stress and high hydrostatic stress in the center of the notched specimen). Twinning was observed in the notch regions of [110] and [111] specimens, and <112> {111} twins were detected and analyzed using orientation imaging scanning electron microscopy. The present work shows that high lattice rotations can be detected in SXs after creep fracture, but they are associated with the high strains accumulated in the final rupture event. © 2020 The Authors

This study analyzes the local deformation behavior of austenitic stainless steel 316L, manufactured conventionally by casting and additively by laser metal deposition (LMD). We produced directionally solidified 316L specimens with most grains showing (001) orientations parallel to the longitudinal specimen axis. We conducted nanoindentation and scratch experiments for local mechanical characterization and topography measurements (atomic force microscopy and confocal laser scanning microscopy) of indentation imprints and residual scratch grooves for the analysis of the deformation behavior and, in particular, of the pile-up behavior. The local mechanical properties and deformation behavior were correlated to the local microstructure investigated by scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and electron backscatter diffraction analysis. The results show that the local mechanical properties, deformation behavior, and scratch resistance strongly depend on the crystallographic orientation. Nearly (001)-oriented grains parallel to the surface show the lowest hardness, followed by an increasing hardness of nearly (101)-and (111)-oriented grains. Consequently, scratch depth is the greatest for nearly (001)-oriented grains followed by (101) and (111) orientations. This tendency is seen independently of the analyzed manufacturing route, namely Bridgman solidification and laser metal deposition. In general, the laser metal deposition process leads to a higher strength and hardness, which is mainly attributed to a higher dislocation density. Under the investigated loading conditions, the cellular segregation substructure is not found to significantly and directly change the local deformation behavior during indentation and scratch testing. © 2020 by the authors.

White etching cracks (WECs) and the associated white etching areas (WEAs) are responsible for failure of widely spread engineering applications such as bearings and railways. Although the phenomenon is known for more than 100 years, the underlying mechanisms are still a matter of debate. In this work, we thoroughly investigate a 100Cr6 wind turbine gearbox bearing after failure in service operation. Based on our findings from detailed microstructure characterization on multiple length scales we formulate a new consistent explanation for the formation of WEAs during rolling contact fatigue. We propose a mechanism of moving WECs - not only in terms of conventional crack propagation but also as a movement of the crack normal to its plane. During cyclic loading the crack continuously changes its position and leaves behind a severely plastically deformed area consisting of ferritic nano-grains, i.e. the WEAs. The atomic-scale delocalization of the crack plane in a single loading cycle adds up to micron-sized WEAs during repetitive loading/unloading. After the initial formation of a fatigue crack around inclusions, crack face rubbing occurs during compressive loading cycles. This leads to the formation of WEA by local severe plastic deformation. It also leads to partial cohesion of the abutting crack faces and material transport between them. As a result, the WEC opens at a slightly shifted position with respect to its former location during unloading. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

We present a fully embedded implementation of a full-field crystal plasticity model in an implicit finite element (FE) framework, a combination which realizes a multiscale approach for the simulation of large strain plastic deformation. At each integration point of the macroscopic FE model a spectral solver, based on Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs), feeds-in the homogenized response from an underlying full-field polycrystalline representative volume element (RVE) model which is solved by using a crystal plasticity constitutive formulation. Both, a phenomenological hardening law and a dislocation density based hardening model, implemented in the open source software DAMASK, have been employed to provide the constitutive response at the mesoscale. The accuracy of the FE-FFT model has been benchmarked by one-element tests of several loading scenarios for an FCC polycrystal including simple tension, simple compression, and simple shear. The multiscale model is applied to simulate four application cases, i.e., plane strain deformation of an FCC plate, compression of an FCC cylinder, four-point bending of HCP bars, and beam bending of a dual-phase steel. The excellent capabilities of the model to predict the microstructure evolution at the mesoscale and the mechanical responses at both macroscale and mesoscale are demonstrated. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd.

High strain-hardening rates in equiatomic CrCoNi and other multi-principal element alloys have been attributed to deformation twinning. This work shows that small additions of Al and Ti to a CrCoNi alloy deactivate deformation twinning with only minor changes to uniform elongation and ultimate tensile strength. The initial microstructure is free of chemically ordered (Al,Ti)-rich precipitates after solutionizing and quenching. Tensile properties for the alloy are reported and compared to equiatomic CrCoNi, and the post-deformation microstructure is assessed. Density functional theory calculations indicate that energetically unfavorable Al-Al bonds may discourage shearing via partial dislocations, which are necessary for twinning to occur. © 2019

Single crystal Ni-based superalloys have long been an essential material for gas turbines in aero engines and power plants due to their outstanding high temperature creep, fatigue and oxidation resistance. A turning point was the addition of only 3 wt.% Re in the second generation of single crystal Ni-based superalloys which almost doubled the creep lifetime. Despite the significance of this improvement, the mechanisms underlying the so-called “Re effect” have remained controversial. Here, we provide direct evidence of Re enrichment to crystalline defects formed during creep deformation, using combined transmission electron microscopy, atom probe tomography and phase field modelling. We reveal that Re enriches to partial dislocations and imposes a drag effect on dislocation movement, thus reducing the creep strain rate and thereby improving creep properties. These insights can guide design of better superalloys, a quest which is key to reducing CO2 emissions in air-traffic. © 2020, The Author(s).

Constitutive models for plastic deformation of metals are typically based on flow rules determining the transition from elastic to plastic response of a material as function of the applied mechanical load. These flow rules are commonly formulated as a yield function, based on the equivalent stress and the yield strength of the material, and its derivatives. In this work, a novel mathematical formulation is developed that allows the efficient use of machine learning algorithms describing the elastic-plastic deformation of a solid under arbitrary mechanical loads and that can replace the standard yield functions with more flexible algorithms. By exploiting basic physical principles of elastic-plastic deformation, the dimensionality of the problem is reduced without loss of generality. The data-oriented approach inherently offers a great flexibility to handle different kinds of material anisotropy without the need for explicitly calculating a large number of model parameters. The applicability of this formulation in finite element analysis is demonstrated, and the results are compared to formulations based on Hill-like anisotropic plasticity as reference model. In future applications, the machine learning algorithm can be trained by hybrid experimental and numerical data, as for example obtained from fundamental micromechanical simulations based on crystal plasticity models. In this way, data-oriented constitutive modeling will also provide a new way to homogenize numerical results in a scale-bridging approach. © 2020 by the authors.

Microscale mechanical behaviour of single crystalline Barium Titanate (BaTiO3), a ferroelectric ceramic was studied by uniaxial in situ micropillar compression and nanoindentation. It was observed that pillars below 1 µm diameter reached the theoretical strength of BaTiO3 whereas larger pillars yielded at lower stress values with multiple stress drops confirming slip activity. A size scaling exponent of 0.96 ± 0.09 was estimated for BaTiO3 which is close to one of the soft fcc metals. The material's strength, hardness and deformation behaviour did not show any dependence on the character of the ferroelectric domain, within our error bars. © 2020

This paper studies elasto-plastic large deformation behaviour of thin shell structures using the isogeometric computational approach with the main focus on the efficiency in modelling the multi-patches and arbitrary material formulation. In terms of modelling, we employ the bending strip method to connect the patches in the structure. The incorporation of bending strips allows to eliminate the strict demand of the C1 continuity condition, which is postulated in the Kirchhoff-Love theory for thin shell, and therefore it enables us to use the standard multi-patch structure even with C0 continuity along the patch boundaries. Furthermore, arbitrary nonlinear material models such as hyperelasticity and finite strain plasticity are embedded in the shell formulation, from which a unified thin shell formulation can be achieved. In terms of analysis, the Bézier decomposition concept is used to retain the local support of the traditional finite element. The performance of the presented approach is verified through several numerical benchmarks. © 2020

Nanoindentation tests have shown that exposure to deuterium plasma causes a decrease in pop-in load and an increase in hardness of tungsten. In this work, we use micro-compression tests to investigate the plastic deformation and apparent strain hardening of tungsten exposed to deuterium plasma. In comparison with the pillars tested at reference state, the pillars tested after exposure showed an increased apparent strain hardening rate as well as an increased multitude of slip traces, which is attributed to the presence of deuterium. The micro-compression results are in agreement with the nanoindentation study on the pop-in and hardness of tungsten. © 2018

In situ nanomechanical testing provides critical insight into the fundamental processes that lead to deformation phenomena in materials. Often, in situ tests are performed in relevant conditions such as high or low temperatures, tribological contact, gas environments, or under radiation exposure. Modern diffraction and imaging methods of materials under load provide high spatial resolution and enable extraction of quantitative mechanical data from local microstructure components or nano-sized objects. The articles in this issue cover recent advances in different types of in situ nanomechanical testing methods, spanning from dedicated nanomechanical testing platforms and microelectromechanical systems devices to deformation analyses via in situ diffraction and imaging methods. This includes scanning electron microscopy, advanced scanning transmission electron microscopy, electron diffraction, x-ray diffraction, and synchrotron techniques. Emerging areas such as in situ tribology enable novel insights into the origin of deformation mechanisms, while the evolution of microelectromechanical systems for controlled in situ testing provide opportunities for advanced control and loading strategies. Discussion on the current state of the art for in situ nanomechanical testing and future opportunities in imaging, strain sensing, and testing environments are also addressed. Copyright © Materials Research Society 2019.

Nanoindentation has been used intensively during the last decades to characterize experimentally the elastic and plastic material properties of phases at the microscale. Accompanying simulations have investigated the plastic mechanisms during nanoindentation. While experiments and simulations have led to a thorough understanding of most mechanisms during nanoindentation, the plasticity on positively and negatively inclined slip planes is still not completely clear. In this work, {1 0 0}-, {1 0 1}- and {1 1 1}-grains of an austenitic stainless steel are indented to better understand the dislocation mediated plasticity through slip step analysis. We observe that slip occurs on positively and negatively inclined slip planes during nanoindentation and we propose methods to differentiate between both types of planes. We find that slip steps on positively inclined slip planes form preferentially during the early stage as compared to the formation of slip steps on negative inclination, which occurs during the later deformation stage due to the change in surface topography. By calculating the resolved shear stress in the presence and absence of pile-ups, we reveal the origin of slip on positively and negatively inclined planes as well as the reason for the sequence of occurrences. We conclude that accounting for the surface topography evolution in experiments and simulations is essential in predicting the plastic slip activation during nanoindentation. © 2019 The Authors

The effect of finely dispersed particles on the functional properties and morphology of thermally induced martensite in Co-Ni-Ga shape memory alloys has been already reported in literature, however, still important aspects are not fully understood. The current study focuses on the stress-induced martensitic transformation of solution-annealed, i.e. precipitate-free, and aged 〈001〉-oriented single crystals. In situ optical microscopy and neutron diffraction experiments show a significant influence of γ′-particles on the martensite variant selection and its morphology under pseudoelastic deformation. In addition, the results reveal detwinning upon loading in the presence of nanometric particles, which is experimentally proven for the first time. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

The important role of grain boundaries for the mechanical properties of polycrystalline materials has been recognized for many decades. Up to now, the underlying deformation mechanisms at the nano- and micro scale are not understood quantitatively. An overview of the synthesis and subsequent mechanical testing of specific grain boundaries at the micro and sub-micro scale is discussed in the present contribution, including various methods for producing one or multiple specific, crystallographically well-defined grain boundaries. Furthermore, established micromachining methods for isolating and measuring local dislocation-grain boundary interactions are portrayed. Examples of the techniques described are shown with to the aid of copper grain boundaries. © Carl Hanser Verlag, München

In this paper, we propose a canonical variational framework for rate-independent phenomenological geometrically linear gradient plasticity with plastic spin. The model combines the additive decomposition of the total distortion into non-symmetric elastic and plastic distortions, with a defect energy contribution taking account of the Burgers vector through a dependence only on the dislocation density tensor Curlp giving rise to a non-symmetric nonlocal backstress, and isotropic hardening response only depending on the accumulated equivalent plastic strain. The model is fully isotropic and satisfies linearized gauge invariance conditions, i.e., only true state variables appear. The model satisfies also the principle of maximum dissipation which allows to show existence for the weak formulation. For this result, a recently introduced Korn’s inequality for incompatible tensor fields is necessary. Uniqueness is shown in the class of strong solutions. For vanishing energetic length scale, the model reduces to classical elasto-plasticity with symmetric plastic strain εp and standard isotropic hardening. © 2019, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

Technologically important mechanical properties of engineering materials often degrade at low temperatures. One class of materials that defy this trend are CrCoNi-based medium- and high-entropy alloys, as they display enhanced strength, ductility, and toughness with decreasing temperature. Here we show, using in situ straining in the transmission electron microscope at 93 K (−180 °C)that their exceptional damage tolerance involves a synergy of deformation mechanisms, including twinning, glide of partials and full dislocations, extensive cross-slip, and multiple slip activated by dislocation and grain-boundary interactions. In particular, massive cross-slip occurs at the early stages of plastic deformation, thereby promoting multiple slip and dislocation interactions. These results indicate that the reduced intensity of thermal activation of defects at low temperatures and the required increase of applied stress for continued plastic flow, together with high lattice resistance, play a pivotal role in promoting the concurrent operation of multiple deformation mechanisms, which collectively enable the outstanding mechanical properties of these alloys. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

Light elements play a crucial role on the microstructure and properties of conventional alloys and steels. Oxygen is one of the light elements which is inevitably introduced into nanocrystalline alloys during manufacturing. Here, we report that severe plastic deformation can fragment the oxides formed in powder processing and eventually cause oxygen dissolution in the matrix. A comparative investigation on Cu-Fe nanocrystalline alloys generated from different initial materials, blended powders and arc-melted bulk materials which have different oxygen contents, reveals that fragmented oxides at grain boundaries effectively decrease the grain boundary mobility, markedly facilitating grain refinement. In contrast, those oxygen atoms dissolved as interstitials in the Cu-Fe matrix lead to lattice expansion and significant decrease of stacking fault energy locally as validated by density functional theory. Such oxygen-mediated microstructure gives rise to enhanced strength and superior structural stability. The remarkable tailoring effect of oxygen can be employed to engineer nanocrystalline materials with desired properties for different applications. © 2018 Acta Materialia Inc.

Low-alloyed steels with body-centered cubic crystal structure are a material class that is widely used for sheet metal forming applications. When having an adequate crystallographic texture and microstructure, their mechanical behavior is characterized by an isotropic in-plane flow behavior in combination with a low yield strength. The decisive processing steps for obtaining these beneficial mechanical properties are cold rolling and subsequent annealing. While for the former the number of passes, the deformation rates, and the total thickness reduction are the main processing parameters, the latter is described mainly by the heating rate and the holding temperature and time. Primary static recrystallization during annealing subsequent to the cold rolling process alters mainly two aspects of the material state: It firstly replaces the elongated and heavily deformed grains of the cold rolled microstructure by small, globular grains with low dislocation density and secondly it changes the crystallographic texture insofar as it typically diminishes the α- and strengthens the γ-fiber texture components. In the present work, the recrystallization behavior of a commercial non-alloyed low carbon steel is studied. A quasi in situ setup that enables site-specific characterization is employed to gain a local picture of the nucleation and recrystallization process. From the Kernel Average Misorientation (KAM) values of the deformation structure, the tendency to be consumed by new grains can be predicted. Crystallographic analysis shows that the most deformed regions have either a γ-fiber orientation or belong to heavily fragmented regions. New grains nucleate especially in such highly deformed regions and inherit often the orientation from the deformation microstructure. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

The micro-sphere modeling framework provides a popular means by which one-dimensional mechanical models can easily and quickly be generalized into three-dimensional stress-strain models. The essential notion of the framework, similar to homogenization theory, is that one allows the microstructural kinematic fields to relax subject to a constraint connected to a macroscopic deformation measure. In its standard presentation, the micro-sphere modeling framework is strictly applicable to elastic materials. Presentations considering inelastic phenomena invariably, and inconsistently, assume an affine relation between inelastic macroscopic and microscopic phenomena. In this work we present a methodology by which one can lift this modeling restriction using two formally different approaches. In particular, we show how one can construct and apply a homogenization with Biot theory to generate fully-relaxed variationally-consistent macroscopic models for inelastic materials within the context of the micro-sphere model. The primary application example will be finite deformation viscoelasticity. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

Anisotropy is one central influencing factor on achievable ultimate machined surface integrity of metallic materials. Specifically, grain boundary has a strong impact on the deformation behaviour of polycrystalline materials and correlated material removal at the microscale. In the present work, we perform molecular dynamics simulations and experiments to elucidate the underlying grain boundary-associated mechanisms and their correlations with machining results of a bi-crystal Cu under nanocutting using a Berkovich tool. Specifically, crystallographic orientations of simulated bi-crystal Cu with a misorientation angle of 44.1° are derived from electron backscatter diffraction characterization of utilized polycrystalline copper specimen. Simulation results reveal that blocking of dislocation motion at grain boundaries, absorption of dislocations by grain boundaries and dislocation nucleation from grain boundaries are operating deformation modes in nanocutting of the bi-crystal Cu. Furthermore, heterogeneous grain boundary-associated mechanisms in neighbouring grains lead to strong anisotropic machining behaviour in the vicinity of the grain boundary. Simulated machined surface morphology and machining force evolution in the vicinity of grain boundary qualitatively agree well with experimental results. It is also found that the geometry of Berkovich tool has a strong impact on grain boundary-associated mechanisms and resultant ploughing-induced surface pile-up phenomenon. © 2019 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of the IMMT

The aim of this paper is to elucidate the mechanisms controlling the brittle-to-ductile transition (BDT) in pre-deformed, textured, polycrystalline body-centred cubic (bcc) metals by the example of cold rolled tungsten (W). For this purpose, five sheets were rolled out from one and the same sintered ingot, by various levels, representing degrees of deformation of 1.8, 2.5, 3.0, 3.4, and 4.1 (this refers to 83.5%, 91.8%, 95.0%, 96.7%, and 98.3% in the technical notation). Toughness tests show that the BDT temperature decreases with increasing degree of deformation from 115 °C ± 15 °C (388 K ± 15 K) down to −65 °C ± 15 °C (208 K ± 15 K). This is an improvement of >600 K compared with a sintered ingot. In this paper we perform an in-depth analysis of the microstructure of the five sheets mentioned above. This analysis includes the assessment of (i) crystallographic texture, (ii) grain size and (iii) dislocation density. A comparison between microstructural features and experimental data confirms our working hypothesis which states that the BDT is controlled by the glide of screw dislocations and that the transition temperature decreases with decreasing spacing, λ of dislocation sources along the crack front. Sources for dislocations may be the intersection points of grain boundaries with the crack front (BDT-temperature-grain-size-relation) or dislocation multiplication processes such as e.g., the expansion of open and closed loops (impact of dislocation density). © 2018 Elsevier Ltd

This work investigates the susceptibility of high-interstitial CrMn austenitic stainless steel CN0.96 to hydrogen environment embrittlement. In this context, an N-free model alloy of CN0.96 steel was designed, produced, and characterized. Both steels were subjected to tensile tests in air and in a high-pressure hydrogen gas atmosphere. Both steels undergo severe hydrogen embrittlement. The CN0.96 steel shows trans- and intergranular failure in hydrogen, whereas the N-free model alloy shows exclusively intergranular failure. The different failure modes could be related to different deformation modes that are induced by the presence or absence of N, respectively. In the CN0.96 steel, N promotes planar dislocation slip. Due to the absence of N in the model alloy, localized slip is less pronounced and mechanical twinning is a more preferred deformation mechanism. The embrittlement of the model alloy could therefore be related to mechanisms that are known from hydrogen embrittlement of twinning-induced plasticity steels. © 2019 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC

Phase decomposition is commonly observed experimentally in single-phase high entropy alloys (HEAs). Hence, it is essential for the consideration of HEAs for structural applications to study and understand the nature of phase decomposition in HEAs, particularly the influence it has on mechanical behavior. This paper describes the phase decomposition in the equiatomic CoCuFeMnNi HEA and how the reported secondary phases influence mechanical behavior. Thermomechanical processing, followed by systematic post deformation annealing treatments, revealed the formation of two distinct secondary phases within the equiatomic face-centered cubic (FCC) matrix phase. Low temperature annealing treatments at 600 °C and below led to the nucleation of Fe-Co rich ordered B2 precipitates that contributed precipitation hardening while sufficiently small in size, on the order of 140 nm in diameter. At temperatures <800 °C Cu segregation, due to its immiscibility with the other constituents, eventually forms a Cu-rich disordered FCC phase that is determined to increase the yield strength of the alloy while reducing the ductility, likely attributable to the presence of additional interfaces. The thermal stability and chemistry of these phases are compared to those predicted on the basis of calculated phase diagram (CALPHAD) analyses. © 2019 Acta Materialia Inc.

A fundamental prerequisite for the micromechanical simulation of fatigue is the appropriate modelling of the effective cyclic properties of the considered material. Therefore, kinematic hardening formulations on the slip system level are of crucial importance due to their fundamental relevance in cyclic material modelling. The focus of this study is the comparison of three different kinematic hardening models (Armstrong Frederick, Chaboche, and Ohno-Wang). In this work, investigations are performed on the modelling and prediction of the cyclic stress-strain behavior of the martensitic high-strength steel SAE 4150 for two different total strain ratios (R Ɛ = -1 and R Ɛ = 0). In the first step, a three-dimensional martensitic microstructure model is developed by using multiscale Voronoi tessellations. Based on this martensitic representative volume element, micromechanical simulations are performed by a crystal plasticity finite element model. For the constitutive model calibration, a new multi-objective calibration procedure incorporating a sensitivity analysis as well as an evolutionary algorithm is presented. The numerical results of different kinematic hardening models are compared to experimental data with respect to the appropriate modelling of the Bauschinger effect and the mean stress relaxation behavior at R Ɛ = 0. It is concluded that the Ohno-Wang model is superior to the Armstrong Frederick and Chaboche kinematic hardening model at R Ɛ = -1 as well as at R Ɛ = 0. © 2019 by the authors.

Hydrogen transport behaviour in metals is greatly influenced by the mechanical stress and the underlying microstructural features. In this work, a micromechanical model based on coupled crystal plasticity and hydrogen diffusion is developed and applied to model hydrogen diffusion and storage in a polycrystalline microstructure. Particular emphasis is laid on mechanical influences on hydrogen transport, invoked by internal stresses and by trapping of dislocations generated by plastic strains. First, a study of a precharged material is carried out where hydrogen is allowed to redistribute under the influence of mechanical loading. These simulations demonstrate to which extent hydrogen migrates from regions with compressive strains to those with tensile strains. In the next step, the influence of plastic prestraining on hydrogen diffusion is analysed. This prestraining produces internal residual stresses in the microstructure, that mimic residual stresses introduced into components during cold working. Lastly, a series of permeation simulations is performed to characterise the influence of hydrogen trapping on effective diffusivity. It is shown that the effective diffusivity decreases with stronger traps and the effect is more prominent at a larger predeformation, because the trapped hydrogen concentration increases considerably. The reduction of effective diffusivity with plastic deformation agrees very well with experimental findings and offers a way to validate and parameterise our model. With this work, it is demonstrated how micromechanical modelling can support the understanding of hydrogen transport on the microstructural level. © 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

We applied a hot rolling direct quenching and partitioning (HDQ&P) process to a low-C low-Si Al-added steel and obtained a Q&P steel containing 40 vol % of ferrite. Microstructure characterization was performed by means of SEM, EBSD, TEM and XRD. Atomic-scale characterization of carbon partitioning among the phases was carried out by atom probe tomography (APT). The carbon distribution in the retained austenite and near the martensite/retained austenite interfaces was quantitatively analyzed to study its partitioning behavior. The macroscopic strain distribution evolution across the tensile sample surface was investigated using macro digital image correlation (DIC) analysis. Combining these results with joint micro-DIC and EBSD analysis during quasi in-situ tensile testing, we investigated the strain partitioning among the different phases and the TRIP effect. Coupling of these results enabled us to reveal the relation among carbon partitioning, strain partitioning and the TRIP effect. The large blocky retained austenite with a side length of about 300–600 nm located near the ferrite/martensite (F/M) interfaces has low stability and transforms to martensite during the early deformation stages, i.e. at average strain below 21%. The retained austenite films in the centers of the martensite regions are more stable. The carbon distribution in both, the martensite and the retained austenite are inhomogeneous, with 0.5–2.0 at. % in the martensite and 4.0–7.5 at. % in the retained austenite. Strong carbon concentration gradients of up to 1.1 at. %/nm were observed near the martensite/retained austenite interfaces. The large blocky retained austenite (300–600 nm in side length) near the F/M interfaces has 1.5–2.0 at. % lower carbon content than that in the narrow retained austenite films (20–150 nm in thickness). The ferrite is soft and deforms prior to the martensite. The strain distribution in ferrite and martensite is inhomogeneous, varying by up to 20% within the same phase at an average strain of about 20%. Ferrite deformation is the main origin of ductility of the material. The balance between ferrite fraction and martensite morphology controls the TRIP effect and its efficiency in reaching a suited combination of strength and ductility. Reducing the ferrite volume fraction and softening the martensite by coarsening and polygonization can enhance the strain carried by the martensite, thus promoting more retained austenite in the martensite regions enabling a TRIP effect. The enhancement of the TRIP effect and the decrease of the strain contrast between ferrite and martensite jointly optimize the micromechanical deformation compatibility of the adjacent phases, thus improving the material's ductility. © 2018 Acta Materialia Inc.

We investigate the mechanisms of deformation-driven forward and reverse (bidirectional) martensitic transformation and the associated nanostructure formation in a metastable carbon-doped high entropy alloy (HEA) upon cold rolling. At thickness reductions below 14%, forward hexagonal-close packed (HCP) martensitic transformation prevails in the single face-centered cubic (FCC) matrix. Surprisingly, at the intersections of two crossing HCP lamellae, deformation-induced reverse transformation from the HCP martensite back to the FCC phase occurs. At higher thickness reductions around 26%–34%, multiple deformation kink bands develop, mainly on the pyramidal habit planes of the HCP martensite, among which reverted FCC phase is also observed resulting in a dual-phase nano-laminated structure. The deformation-induced reverted FCC phase regions exhibit a twin stacking sequence relative to the prior FCC matrix, which is related to the underlying dislocation reactions and rearrangement of the partial dislocations. At 67% thickness reduction, the deformation bands develop further into micro-shear bands consisting of nanosized (sub)grains. For rendering the dual-phase nanostructure back to single-phase FCC, 400 °C/10 min tempering is applied on a 34% cold-rolled specimen. The resulting nanostructure is characterized by nano-(sub)grains and nano-twins. It exhibits an excellent strength-ductility synergy (ultimate tensile strength 1.05 GPa at 35% total elongation) due to the improved work hardening enabled by both, FCC-HCP martensitic transformation in confined regions and mechanical twinning. With this, we show that bulk nanostructured alloys with bidirectional transformation can be designed by tuning the materials’ phase stability to their thermodynamic limits with the aim to trigger sequential athermal forward and reverse transformation under load. © 2019 Acta Materialia Inc.

Deformation-induced nanoscale twinning is one of the mechanisms responsible for the excellent combination of strength and fracture toughness of the single-phase, face-centered cubic CrMnFeCoNi (Cantor)alloy, especially at cryogenic temperatures. Here, we use a novel, modified dogbone geometry that permits the sampling of varying stress and strain regions within a single tensile specimen to characterize the onset of twinning in CrMnFeCoNi at 293 K, 198 K and 77 K. Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD)and backscattered electron (BSE)imaging revealed the presence of deformation nano-twins in regions of the samples that had experienced plastic strains of ∼25% at 293 K, ∼16% at 198 K, and ∼8% at 77 K, which are similar to the threshold strains described by Laplanche et al. (Acta Mater. 118, 2016, 152–163). From these strains we estimate that the critical tensile stress for the onset of twinning in this alloy is on the order of 750 MPa. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

In the scope of this work, a micromechanical model based on the crystal plasticity finite element method is proposed and applied to describe the nucleation and growth of microstructurally short fatigue cracks in polycrystalline materials under cyclic loads. The microstructure is generated in the form of a representative volume element of a polycrystalline material with equiaxed grains having columnar structure along thickness and random crystallographic texture. With this model, we investigate the influence of loading amplitude on the crack growth behavior. It is shown that for smaller strain amplitudes, a single crack nucleates and propagates, while for larger strain amplitudes several independent crack nucleation sites form, from which microcracks start propagating. It is also observed that the global plastic strain amplitude decreases from the initial to the final cycle, during total strain-controlled loading. However, this can even increase the crack growth rate because the crack advance is governed by the local plastic slip which accumulates at the crack tip over the number of cycles. With this work, it is shown that micromechanical modeling can strongly improve our understanding of the mechanisms of short-crack nucleation and growth under fatigue loading. © 2019 Materials Research Society.

Mechanical properties of crystalline materials strongly correlate with deformation behaviour at the grain level. In the present work, we establish a 3D crystal plasticity finite element model of nanoscratching of single crystalline copper using a Berkovich probe, which is capable of addressing the crystallography influence. In particular, nanoindentation experiments and high resolution electron back-scatter diffraction characterization are jointly carried out to precisely calibrate parameters used in the crystal plasticity finite element model. Subsequent finite element simulations of nanoscratching are performed to reveal fundamental deformation behaviour of single crystalline copper in terms of mechanical response and surface pile-up topography, as well as their dependence on crystallographic orientation. Furthermore, nanoscratching experiments with the same parameters used in the finite element simulations are carried out, the results of which are further compared with predication results by the finite element simulations. Simulation data and experimental results jointly demonstrate the strong anisotropic characteristics of single crystalline copper under nanoscratching, due to the crystallographic orientation dependent coupled effects of intrinsic dislocation slip and extrinsic discrete stress distribution by probe geometry. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

Cracks often initiate at phase boundaries in conventional second phase reinforced alloys during cyclic loading, which limits their fatigue properties. Here, we prepared a nanotwin strengthened 316L stainless steel consisting of nanotwinned and recrystallized grains by using plastic deformation and subsequent partial recrystallization annealing. Fatigue tests revealed that interfaces separating hard nanotwinned grains from soft recrystallized ones exhibited excellent resistance to crack initiation. More than half of the cracks (57% in number fraction) are found in recrystallized grains while a small fraction (11%) is observed at the interfaces between nanotwinned and recrystallized grains. This is ascribed to the elastic homogeneity and cyclic deformation compatibility between nanotwinned and recrystallized grains. At small cumulative cyclic strains (below 4000 cycles at σa = 450 MPa), nanotwinned grains deform compatibly with the recrystallized grains without noticeable strain localization at their interfaces. Nanotwins can accommodate cyclic plastic strains by interaction of dislocations with twin boundaries, especially through the motion of the well-ordered threading dislocations inside the twin lamellae. At large cumulative strains, a moderate strain gradient is developed in recrystallized grains surrounding nanotwinned grains as a function of distance from the interfaces due to the occurrence of localized deformation in nanotwinned grains. The nanotwinned grains show high microstructural stability without notable de-twinnning, thus retarding crack initiation and propagation. Therefore, improved fatigue property with high fatigue limit of ∼350 MPa and high fatigue ratio of ∼0.45 is achieved in the nanotwin strengthened stainless steel, which is better than that of conventional second phase reinforced steels with comparable strength. © 2018 Acta Materialia Inc.

One ambitious objective of Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) is to shorten the materials development cycle by using computational materials simulation techniques at different length scales. In this regard, the most important aspects are the prediction of the microstructural evolution during material processing and the understanding of the contributions of microstructural features to the mechanical response of the materials. One possible solution to such a challenge is to apply the Phase Field (PF) method because it can predict the microstructural evolution under the influence of different internal or external stimuli, including deformation. To accomplish this, it is necessary to take into account plasticity or, specifically, non-homogeneous plastic deformation, which is particularly important for investigating the size effects in materials emerging at the micron length scale. In this work, we present quasi-2D simulations of plastic deformation in a face centred cubic system using a finite strain formulation. Our model consists of dislocation-based strain gradient crystal plasticity implemented into a PF code. We apply this model to study the influence of grain size on the mechanical behavior of polycrystals, which includes dislocation storage and annihilation. Furthermore, the initial state of the material before deformation is also considered. The results show that a dislocation-based strain gradient crystal plasticity model can capture the Hall-Petch effect in many aspects. The model reproduced the correct functional dependence of the flow stress of the polycrystal on grain size without assigning any special properties to the grain boundaries. However, the predicted Hall-Petch coefficients are significantly smaller than those found typically in experiments. In any case, we found a good qualitative agreement between our findings and experimental results. © 2019 by the authors.

The microstructure-mechanical property relationships of a non-equiatomic FeMnCoCr high entropy alloy (HEA), which shows a single face-centered cubic (fcc) structure in the undeformed state, have been systematically investigated at room and cryogenic temperatures. Both strength and ductility increase significantly when reducing the probing temperature from 293 K to 77 K. During tensile deformation at 293 K, dislocation slip and mechanical twinning prevail. At 173 K deformation-driven athermal transformation from the fcc phase to the hexagonal close-packed (hcp) martensite is the dominant mechanism while mechanical twinning occurs in grains with high Schmid factors. At 77 K athermal martensitic transformation continues to prevail in addition to dislocation slip and twinning. The reduction in the mean free path for dislocation slip through the fine martensite bundles and deformation twins leads to the further increased strength. The joint activation of transformation and twinning under cryogenic conditions is attributed to the decreased stacking fault energy and the enhanced flow stress of the fcc matrix with decreasing temperature. These mechanisms lead to an elevated strain hardening capacity and an enhanced strength-ductility combination. The temperature-dependent synergy effects of martensite formation, twinning and dislocation plasticity originate from the metastability alloy design concept. This is realized by relaxing the equiatomic HEA constraints towards reduced Ni and increased Mn contents, enabling a non-equiatomic material with low stacking fault energy. These insights are important for designing strong and ductile Ni-saving alloys for cryogenic applications. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

We investigate the cryogenic deformation response and underlying mechanisms of a carbon-doped interstitial high-entropy alloy (iHEA) with a nominal composition of Fe49.5Mn30Co10Cr10C0.5 (at. %). Extraordinary strain hardening of the iHEA at 77 K leads to a substantial increase in ultimate tensile strength (∼1300 MPa) with excellent ductility (∼50%) compared to that at room temperature. Prior to loading, iHEAs with coarse (∼100 μm) and fine (∼6 μm) grain sizes show nearly single face-centered cubic (FCC) structure, while the fraction of hexagonal close-packed (HCP) phase reaches up to ∼70% in the cryogenically tensile-fractured iHEAs. Such an unusually high fraction of deformation-induced phase transformation and the associated plasticity (TRIP effect) is caused by the strong driving force supported by the reduced stacking fault energy and increased flow stress at 77 K. The transformation mechanism from the FCC matrix to the HCP phase is revealed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observations. In addition to the deformation-induced phase transformation, stacking faults and dislocation slip contribute to the deformation of the FCC matrix phase at low strains and of the HCP phase at medium and large strains, suggesting dynamic strain partitioning among these two phases. The combination of TRIP and dynamic strain partitioning explain the striking strain hardening capability and resulting excellent combination of strength and ductility of iHEAs under cryogenic conditions. The current investigation thus offers guidance for the design of high-performance HEAs for cryogenic applications. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.

MAX phases have great potential under demands of both high-temperature and high-stress performance, with their mixed atomic bonding producing the temperature and oxidation resistance of ceramics with the mechanical resilience of metals. Here, we measure the mechanical properties up to 980C by nanoindentation on highly dense and pure Cr2AlC, as well as after oxidation with a burner rig at 1200 °C for more than 29 h. Only modest reductions in both hardness and modulus up to 980 °C were observed, implying no change in deformation mechanism. Furthermore, micro-cantilever fracture tests were carried out at the Cr2AlC/Cr7C3 and Cr7C3/Al2O3 interfaces after the oxidation of the Cr2AlC substrates with said burner rig. The values are typical of ceramic-ceramic interfaces, below 4 MPam, leading to the hypothesis that the excellent macroscopic behaviour is due to a combination of low internal strain due to the match in thermal expansion coefficient as well as the convoluted interface. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

Overcoming the trade-off between strength and ductility in metallic materials is a grand challenge. Recently, materials with a gradient nano-grained (GNG) surface layer adhering to a ductile coarse-grained (CG) substrate have been proposed to overcome this long-standing dilemma. Constitutive modeling and simulation are crucial to understand the deformation mechanisms controlling the strength and ductility in GNG/CG materials, and to enable theory to guide microstructure optimization for upscaling. Here, we develop a dislocation mechanism based size-dependent crystal plasticity model, where multiple dislocation evolution mechanisms are considered. Furthermore, damage evolution and mechanically driven grain growth during the deformation of GNG/CG materials are incorporated into the constitutive model to study the role of microstructure gradient in the overall plastic response. The developed size-dependent constitutive model was implemented within a finite-strain crystal plasticity finite element framework, and used to predict the tensile mechanical behavior of GNG/CG copper, including yield stress, strain-hardening and ductility with a highly simplified geometrical representation of the microstructure. The simulations reveal some of the underlying deformation mechanisms controlling ductility and strengthening in terms of the spatial distribution and temporal evolution of microstructure and damage. The model was also used to demonstrate optimization of strength and ductility of GNG/CG copper. By manipulating the thickness of the GNG layer and the grain size of the CG substrate, the strength increase is associated with a loss of ductility showing the same linear inverse relationship observed experimentally for GNG/CG copper, which indicates the improvement over the typical nonlinear trade-off between strength and ductility. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd.

Cu-Cr alloys with ∼32 at.% Cr were rapidly solidified by splat quenching or laser melting techniques with the intention to form a very fine grained, non-equilibrium nanostructure similar to those obtained by severe plastic deformation or thin film deposition. The rapidly solidified Cu-Cr alloys were analyzed by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Both synthesis techniques lead to a similar two-phase microstructure with a nearly pure fcc Cu matrix with μm grain sizes and bcc Cr particles highly supersaturated with Cu. Splat quenching provides finer bcc particles with dimensions of less than 50 nm compared to laser melting with particle sizes of 100–2000 nm. In case of laser melting, (14 ± 2) at.% Cu are contained in the bcc phase, while splat quenching freezes (20 ± 2) at.% Cu in the bcc particles. The microstructures are discussed and compared to the non-equilibrium microstructures reported in literature using severe plastic deformation and thin films deposition. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

The creep behavior of a multinary single crystal Co-base superalloy has been compared for uniaxial tension and compression of 400 MPa applied along [001] at 850 °C. Creep under tensile stress proceeds two times faster than creep under compression. A detailed TEM study shows that already after ∼0.3 % creep strain planar faults are formed in both samples. While extended a/2<112> ribbons with SISF loops embedded in APBs are observed in tension, extrinsic SFs are revealed in compression. At ∼5 % creep strain SISFs confined to the γ′ phase dominate in tension, whereas extrinsic SFs and microtwins extending across both phases are the prevalent planar faults in compression. In addition, dense networks of regular a/2<101> matrix dislocations develop at the γ/γ′ interfaces in both loading scenarios. In tensile creep and early compressive creep the direct contribution of planar faults to plastic deformation is minor and does not exceed 10 % of the measured plastic strain. In contrast, thickening of microtwins appears to become an efficient deformation channel in the later stages of compressive creep. A pronounced asymmetry regarding the rafting kinetics is observed resulting in a P-type rafted and topologically inverted microstructure after ∼5 % creep in tension while hardly any rafting has occurred under compression. The pronounced rafting and related recovery processes are likely responsible for the inferior creep behavior in tension. Finally, two novel diffusion-assisted degradation mechanisms related to microtwins are shown to be active: an expansion of the γ phase into γ′ precipitates along microtwins and the formation of γ phase nuclei at planar fault intersections inside γ′. Both phenomena are hypothesized to be triggered by segregation of γ formers like Co and Cr to planar faults. © 2019 Acta Materialia Inc.

Linear defects, referred to as dislocations, determine the strength, formability, and toughness of crystalline metallic alloys. The associated deformation mechanisms are well understood for traditional metallic materials consisting of one or two prevalent matrix elements such as steels or aluminum alloys. In the recently developed high-entropy alloys (HEAs) containing multiple principal elements, the relationship between dislocations and the mechanical behavior is less understood. Particularly HEAs with a hexagonal close-packed (hcp) structure can suffer from intrinsic brittleness due to their insufficient number of slip systems. Here we report on the surprisingly high formability of a novel high-entropy phase with hcp structure. Through in situ tensile testing and postmortem characterization by transmission electron microscopy we reveal that the hcp phase in a dual-phase HEA (Fe50Mn30Co10Cr10, at. %) activates three types of dislocations, i.e., a ©, ccopy;, and +a©. Specifically, nonbasal c+a© dislocations occupy a high line fraction of ∼31% allowing for frequent double cross slip which explains the high deformability of this high-entropy phase. The hcp structure has a c/a ratio of 1.616, i.e., below the ideal value of 1.633. This modest change in the structure parameters promotes nonbasal c+a© slip, suggesting that ductile HEAs with hcp structure can be designed by shifting the c/a ratio into regimes where nonbasal slip systems are activated. This simple alloy design principle is particularly suited for HEAs due to their characteristic massive solid solution content which readily allows tuning the c/a ratio of hcp phases into regimes promoting nonbasal slip activation. © 2019 American Physical Society.

Purpose: This paper aims to reveal the mechanism for improving ductile machinability of 3C-silicon carbide (SiC) and associated cutting mechanism in stress-assisted nanometric cutting. Design/methodology/approach: Molecular dynamics simulation of nano-cutting 3C-SiC is carried out in this paper. The following two scenarios are considered: normal nanometric cutting of 3C-SiC; and stress-assisted nanometric cutting of 3C-SiC for comparison. Chip formation, phase transformation, dislocation activities and shear strain during nanometric cutting are analyzed. Findings: Negative rake angle can produce necessary hydrostatic stress to achieve ductile removal by the extrusion in ductile regime machining. In ductile-brittle transition, deformation mechanism of 3C-SiC is combination of plastic deformation dominated by dislocation activities and localization of shear deformation. When cutting depth is greater than 10 nm, material removal is mainly achieved by shear. Stress-assisted machining can lead to better quality of machined surface. However, there is a threshold for the applied stress to fully gain advantages offered by stress-assisted machining. Stress-assisted machining further enhances plastic deformation ability through the active dislocations’ movements. Originality/value: This work describes a stress-assisted machining method for improving the surface quality, which could improve 3C-SiC ductile machining ability. © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited.

We have investigated the twinning-induced plasticity (TWIP) and transformation-induced plasticity (TRIP) as well as the influence of ω phase on these two phenomena in a metastable β-type Ti–25Nb–0.7Ta–2Zr (at.%) alloy. We set off with two starting states: one is ω-free and the other one contains a high number density (3.20 ± 0.78 × 1024 m−3) of nanometer-sized (∼1.23 nm) ω particles. Deformation experiments demonstrate that the plastic deformation of the ω-free alloy is mediated by stress-induced β → α” martensitic transformation, {332} twinning and dislocation slip, where the former two induce joint TRIP and TWIP effects and the latter one carries the majority of the plastic strain. In the ω-enriched alloy, the ω particles fully suppress the TWIP and TRIP effects and promote localization of dislocation plasticity into specific ω-devoid channels. Atom probe tomography analysis reveals that the elemental partitioning between β and ω results in only subtle enrichment of solutes in the β matrix, which cannot sufficiently stabilize the matrix to prevent martensitic transformation and twinning. A new mechanism based on the shear modulus difference between β and ω is proposed to explain the suppression of TRIP and TWIP effects by ω particles. © 2018 Acta Materialia Inc.

In the cold spray process, deposition of particles takes place through intensive plastic deformation upon impact in a solid state at the temperatures well below their melting point. The high particle impact velocity causes high local stresses which lead to deforming the particles and the substrate plastically in the proximity of the particle–substrate interface. As a result, high residual stresses are introduced in cold spray coatings due to the peening effect of the particles collisions with the substrate. In this study, a powder based on the chemical composition of IN 718 was cold-sprayed on IN 718 substrates by using nitrogen gas for an application as a repair tool for aero engine components. The magnitude of the residual stress and its distribution through the thickness were measured by using the hole-drilling and the bending methods. Residual stress was also estimated by using an approach based on the physical process parameters. Mainly compressive residual stresses were observed in cold-sprayed IN 718 coatings. Accumulation of residual stresses in the coatings is highly affected by peening during deposition and it decreases with increase in thickness. It has been observed that the adhesion-strengths of cold-sprayed IN 718 coatings are highly influenced by coating thickness and residual stress states of the coating/substrate system. In the presence of residual stresses in the coatings, adhesion-strength decreases with increasing coating thickness. The energy-release-rate criterion has been used to predict adhesion-strength with increasing coating thickness. Predicted bond-strength values are close to the measured adhesion-strength values and decrease with increase in coating thickness. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.

The accumulation of plastic strain as an essential element of the compression behavior of metal foams is investigated by analyzing effective stress-strain curves which were recorded during testing. By applying loading/unloading cycles within the low-strain region until reaching the stress plateau, it is studied how reversible elastic deformation is gradually transformed into irreversible plastic deformation and it is shown that both, elastic and plastic strains, contribute to the total strain ε. This behavior is found to be independent on the investigated mesostructural foam morphologies. Furthermore, a method is derived which can be used to determine a proof stress σϕPl=0.5 at which yielding dominates the deformation of a metal foam. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.

The recently developed interstitial high-entropy alloys (iHEAs) exhibit an enhanced combination of strength and ductility. These properties are attributed to dislocation hardening, deformation-driven athermal phase transformation from the face-centered cubic (FCC) γ matrix into the hexagonal close-packed (HCP) ε phase, stacking fault formation, mechanical twinning and precipitation hardening. For gaining a better understanding of these mechanisms as well as their interactions direct observation of the deformation process is required. For this purpose, an iHEA with nominal composition of Fe-30Mn-10Co-10Cr-0.5C (at. %) was produced and investigated via in-situ and interrupted in-situ tensile testing in a scanning electron microscope (SEM) combining electron channeling contrast imaging (ECCI) and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) techniques. The results reveal that the iHEA is deformed by formation and multiplication of stacking faults along {111} microbands. Sufficient overlap of stacking faults within microbands leads to intrinsic nucleation of HCP ε phase and incoherent annealing twin boundaries act as preferential extrinsic nucleation sites for HCP ε formation. With further straining HCP ε nuclei grow into the adjacent deformed FCC γ matrix. γ regions with smaller grain size have higher mechanical stability against phase transformation. Twinning in FCC γ grains with a size of ∼10 μm can be activated at room temperature at a stress below ∼736 MPa. With increasing deformation, new twin lamellae continuously nucleate. The twin lamellae grow in preferred directions driven by the motion of the mobile partial dislocations. Owing to the individual grain size dependence of the activation of the dislocation-mediated plasticity, of the athermal phase transformation and of mechanical twinning at the different deformation stages, desired strain hardening profiles can be tuned and adjusted over the entire deformation regime by adequate microstructure design, providing excellent combinations of strength and ductility. © 2018 Acta Materialia Inc.

Nanoscale solute segregation to or near lattice defects is a coupled diffusion and trapping phenomenon that occurs in superalloys at high temperatures during service. Understanding the mechanisms underpinning this crucial process will open pathways to tuning the alloy composition for improving the high-temperature performance and lifetime. Here, we introduce an approach combining atom probe tomography with high-end scanning electron microscopy techniques, in transmission and backscattering modes, to enable direct investigation of solute segregation to defects generated during high-temperature deformation such as dislocations in a heat-treated Ni-based superalloy and planar faults in a CoNi-based superalloy. Three protocols were elaborated to capture the complete structural and compositional nature of the targeted defect in the alloy. © 2018 The Author(s)

Shear testing can contribute to a better understanding of the plastic deformation of Ni-base superalloy single crystals. In the present study, shear testing is discussed with special emphasis placed on its strengths and weaknesses. Key mechanical and microstructural results which were obtained for the high-temperature (T ≈ 1000 °C) and low-stress (τ ≈ 200 MPa) creep regime are briefly reviewed. New 3D stereo STEM images of dislocation substructures which form during shear creep deformation in this regime are presented. It is then shown which new aspects need to be considered when performing double shear creep testing at lower temperatures (T < 800 °C) and higher stresses (τ > 600 MPa). In this creep regime, the macroscopic crystallographic [11−2](111) shear system deforms significantly faster than the [01−1](111) system. This represents direct mechanical evidence for a new planar fault nucleation scenario, which was recently suggested (Wu et al. in Acta Mater 144:642–655, 2018). The double shear creep specimen geometry inspired a micro-mechanical in-situ shear test specimen. Moreover, the in-situ SEM shear specimen can be FIB micro-machined from prior dendritic and interdendritic regions. Dendritic regions, which have a lower γ′ volume fraction, show a lower critical resolved shear stress. © 2018 The Author(s)

To achieve safety and reliability in pipelines installed in seismic and permafrost regions, it is necessary to use linepipe materials with high strength and ductility. The introduction of dual-phase steels, e.g., with a bainite and dispersed martensite-austenite (MA) constituent, would provide the necessary ingredients for the improvement of the strain capacity (as required by a new strain-based linepipe design approach) and toughness. To fine-tune the alloy design and ensure these dual-phase steels have the required mechanical properties, an understanding of the governing deformation micromechanisms is essential. For this purpose, a recently developed joint numerical-experimental approach that involves the integrated use of microscopic digital image correlation analysis, electron backscatter diffraction, and multiphysics crystal plasticity simulations with a spectral solver was employed in this study. The local strain and stress evolution and microstructure maps of representative microstructural patches were captured with a high spatial resolution using this approach. A comparison of these maps provides new insights into the deformation mechanism in dual-phase microstructures, especially regarding the influence of the bainite and MA grain size and the MA distribution on the strain localization behavior. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd.

To reveal the operating mechanisms of plastic deformation in an FCC high-entropy alloy, the activation volumes in CrMnFeCoNi have been measured as a function of plastic strain and temperature between 77 K and 423 K using repeated load relaxation experiments. At the yield stress, σy, the activation volume varies from ∼60 b3 at 77 K to ∼360 b3 at 293 K and scales inversely with yield stress. With increasing plastic strain, the activation volume decreases and the trends follow the Cottrell-Stokes law, according to which the inverse activation volume should increase linearly with σ−σy (Haasen plot). This is consistent with the notion that hardening due to an increase in the density of forest dislocations is naturally associated with a decrease in the activation volume because the spacing between dislocations decreases. The values and trends in activation volume agree with theoretical predictions that treat the HEA as a high-concentration solid-solution-strengthened alloy. These results demonstrate that this HEA deforms by the mechanisms typical of solute strengthening in FCC alloys, and thus indicate that the high compositional/structural complexity does not introduce any new intrinsic deformation mechanisms. © 2017 Acta Materialia Inc.

The recently developed dual-phase high-entropy alloys are characterized by pronounced strain hardening and high ductility under monotonic loading owing to the associated transformation induced plasticity effect. Fatigue properties of high-entropy alloys have not been studied in depth so far. The current study focuses on the low-cycle fatigue regime. Cyclic tests were conducted and the microstructure evolution was studied post-mortem. Despite deformation-induced martensitic transformation during cycling at given plastic strain amplitudes, intense strain hardening in the cyclic stress-strain response is not observed. This behavior is attributed to the planar nature of slip and partial reversibility of deformation. © 2017 Acta Materialia Inc.

The formation of dislocations patterns within the plastic zone ahead of a crack tip introduced by fatigue loading in AA2024-T3 sheets is studied by electron channelling contrast imaging (ECCI) and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). The aim lies in correlating local plastic effects at grain level with digital image correlation (DIC) results obtained at coarser resolution. While dislocation patterns are observed already prior to fatigue loading, the presence of dislocation sources and dislocation entanglements increases towards highly deformed regions near the crack path. Also, deformation veins are revealed by EBSD in grains located along the crack path. Based on ECCI and EBSD the dislocation density was determined and shows a gradient towards the crack tip. The results help linking the process of fatigue deformation at grain-level to the deformation field probed at the meso-scale level. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.

Numerical methods for predicting localized shear failure in elasto-plastic solids have experienced considerable advancements in the last decades. Among these approaches, the so-called “Embedded Strong Discontinuity (ESD)” method is often successfully used to accurately simulate the post-localization response with negligible dependence on the finite element discretization. However, it was observed that the employed discontinuity tracking strategy plays a crucial role in the successful localization analysis. In this contribution, we propose a novel strategy for the global tracking of discontinuity surfaces. It is based on exploiting information obtained from the enhanced parameters employed in Enhanced Assumed Strain (EAS) formulations. It is well known, that enhanced strain element formulations are able to better capture localized shear deformations as compared to standard finite elements. This can be explained as a consequence of the improved performance in bending. We observed, that the approximation of the strain jumps delimiting the shear band is connected with a deformation field characterized by opposite bending curvatures across these two discontinuities. Hence, in view of the relations existing between the kinematics of strong and weak discontinuities, we formulate a proper scalar function of the enhanced parameters to identify potential strong discontinuity surfaces, which are evaluated in each step of the analysis with negligible computational cost. This proposed approach has a global character, as it is based upon evaluating discontinuity surfaces defined in the complete analysis domain that are, by construction, continuous across elements. We demonstrate that the tracking algorithm correctly identifies the potential strong discontinuity surface already in early loading stages, even before a localization condition is fulfilled. In those elements which are crossed by the potential failure surface and which also satisfy the localization condition, the kinematics of embedded strong discontinuities is activated to capture the shear failure surface. The performance of the new tracking algorithm is demonstrated by means of several numerical shear localization analyses using associative and non-associative Drucker–Prager elastoplastic models to simulate 2-D and 3-D benchmarkanalyses. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.

The use of external electric and magnetic fields for the synthesis and processing of inorganic materials such as metals and ceramics has seen renewed interest in recent years. Electromagnetic energy can be utilized in different ways to improve or accelerate phase formation and stabilization, chemical ordering, densification and coarsening of particle-based materials (pore elimination and grain growth), and mechanical deformation (plasticity and creep). In these new synthesis and processing routes, the resulting microstructures and macroscopic material behavior are determined by the interaction of the applied fields with defects such as single or clustered point defects, dislocation networks, and interfaces. Multiscale experimental investigations and modeling are necessary to unveil the mechanisms underlying this field-assisted manipulation of matter. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd

We investigate the reasons for severe deformation patterning observed in crystal plasticity simulations of an fcc nickel single crystal with initial near-Copper orientation deformed in plane strain compression. The resulting strain partitioning in the form of alternating parallel bands initiates at a very early loading stage, i.e. <0.5% global strain, and sharpens with ongoing deformation. At an applied average strain of 5.5%, the local strains finally deviate by half an order of magnitude in different regions of the initially homogeneous single crystal. We show that this microstructure lamination is the result of a complex interplay between available deformation systems, strain hardening, kinematics, and deformation energetics. Moreover, the boundary conditions play an important role as under the applied load two slip systems—which are collinear with respect to each other—have the same highest Schmid factor and therefore are preferentially activated. During strain hardening, the strong collinear interaction strength causes—depending on the initial deviation from the nominal orientation—the selection of a single prevalent slip system in clearly delimited regions. This behavior is explained by the lower global deformation energy in comparison to a homogeneous double slip behavior. We also reveal that the observed deformation pattern forms only for dislocation interaction strength values in the range predicted by discrete dislocation dynamic simulations. © 2018

Innovative test setup for the cyclic loading of multiple large-format concrete specimens. In case of concrete structures, cyclic loading can cause a microstructural degradation long before critical fatigue failure. In combination with other exposures, such as de-icing agents or sea water, this can result in an impairment of the durability. Therefore, load-dependent and load-independent cyclic loads must be distinguished. Load-independent but recurring loads are defined by thermal and hygroscopic deformations during the annual and daily changes for each concrete component. Load-dependent cyclic loads can be caused by i.e. traffic on concrete pavements or bridges or from the rotor blades of wind power plants. In order to be able to record the influence of the cyclic loads and their consequences on the durability (degradation of the concrete structure), also in combination with other exposures, a test setup was developed at the Institute of Building Materials at the Ruhr-University Bochum. This test setup allows a realistic simulation of cyclic loads on large-scale concrete specimens. The development, the functional principle and the successful use of the multiple test setup in several research projects are presented in this publication. Copyright © 2018 Ernst & Sohn Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin

The dependence of the microstructure on the degree of deformation in near-surface regions of a 16MnCr5 gear wheel after 2.1 × 106 loading cycles has been investigated by x-ray diffraction analysis, transmission electron microscopy, and atom probe tomography. Retained austenite and large martensite plates, along with elongated lamella-like cementite, were present in a less deformed region. Comparatively, the heavily deformed region consisted of a nanocrystalline structure with carbon segregation up to 2 at.% at grain boundaries. Spheroid-shaped cementite, formed at the grain boundaries and triple junctions of the nanosized grains, was enriched with Cr and Mn but depleted with Si. Such partitioning of Cr, Mn, and Si was not observed in the elongated cementite formed in the less deformed zone. This implies that rolling contact loading induced severe plastic deformation as well as a pronounced annealing effect in the active contact region of the toothed gear during cyclic loading. © 2018 The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society

The effects of quasi-static and low-dynamic strain rate (ε̇ = 10−4 /s to ε̇ = 102 /s) on tensile properties and deformation mechanisms were studied in a Fe-25Mn-3Al-3Si (wt%) twinning and transformation-induced plasticity [TWIP-TRIP] steel. The fully austenitic microstructure deforms primarily by dislocation glide but due to the room temperature stacking fault energy [SFE] of 21 ± 3 mJ/m2 for this alloy, secondary deformation mechanisms such as mechanical twinning (TWIP) and epsilon martensite formation (TRIP) also play an important role in the deformation behavior. The mechanical twins and epsilon-martensite platelets act as planar obstacles to subsequent dislocation motion on non-coplanar glide planes and reduce the dislocation mean free path. A high-speed thermal camera was used to measure the increase in specimen temperature as a function of strain, which enabled the use of a thermodynamic model to predict the increase in SFE. The influence of strain rate and strain on microstructural parameters such as the thickness and spacing of mechanical twins and epsilon-martensite laths was quantified using dark field transmission electron microscopy, electron channeling contrast imaging, and electron backscattered diffraction. The effect of sheet thickness on mechanical properties was also investigated. Increasing the tensile specimen thickness increased the product of ultimate tensile strength and total elongation, but had no significant effect on uniform elongation or yield strength. The yield strength exhibited a significant increase with increasing strain rate, indicating that dislocation glide becomes more difficult with increasing strain rate due to thermally-activated short-range barriers. A modest increase in ultimate tensile strength and minimal decrease in uniform elongation were noted at higher strain rates, suggesting adiabatic heating, slight changes in strain-hardening rate and observed strain localizations as root causes, rather than a significant change in the underlying TWIP-TRIP mechanisms at low values of strain. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.

The deformation mechanisms operating in nanostructured bainite, leading to its excellent combination of strength and ductility, are far from being understood. Its nanocrystalline nature and its multiphase-evolving structure underlie the plastic flow and the strain-hardening behaviour. In this work, the microstructural and crystallographic bulk changes of a high-C nanostructured bainite under tensile testing have been evaluated. The influence of the mechanically-induced transformation of the C-enriched retained austenite into α martensite and other deformation mechanisms on the texture evolution has been analysed by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). Additionally, the undeformed and the deformed conditions have been examined by electron channelling contrast imaging (ECCI) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Results reveal the presence of plate martensite and suggest a strong variant selection during the transformation, mainly responsible for the texture observed. Mechanical twinning in austenite seems to be basically the mechanism of accommodation of the displacive bainitic transformation, while some direct interaction with the applied stress also appears. © 2018

According to the classical Eshelby inclusion problem, we introduce a new linear relation to calculate internal stresses in γ/γ′ microstructures of superalloys via an effective stiffness method. To accomplish this, we identify regions with almost uniform deformation behavior within the microstructure. Assigning different eigenstrains to these regions results in a characteristic internal stress state. The linear relation between eigenstrains and internal stresses, as proposed by Eshelby for simpler geometries, is shown to be a valid approximation to the solution for complex microstructures. The fast Fourier transformation method is chosen as a very efficient numerical solver to determine the effective stiffness matrix. Numerical validation shows that this generalized method with the effective stiffness matrix is efficient to obtain appropriate internal stresses and that it can be used to consider the influence of internal stresses on plasticity and creep kinetics in superalloys. © 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Micro- and nanomechanical testing has seen a rapid development over the last decade with miniaturized test rigs and MEMS-based devices providing access to the mechanical properties and performance of materials from the micrometer down to the tenths of nanometer length scale. In this overview, we summarize firstly the different testing concepts with excursions into recent imaging and diffraction developments, which turn micro- and nanomechanical testing into “quantitative mechanical microscopy” by resolving the underlying material physics and simultaneously providing mechanical properties. A special focus is laid on the pitfalls of micro-compression testing with its stringent boundary conditions often hampering reliable experiments. Additionally, the challenges of instrumented micro- and nanomechanical testing at elevated temperature are summarized. From the wide variety of research topics employing micro- and nanomechanical testing of materials we focus here on miniaturized samples and test rigs and provide three examples to elucidate the state-of-the-art of the field: (i) probing the “strength” of individual grain boundaries in metals, (ii) temperature dependent deformation mechanisms in metallic nanolayered and -alloyed structures, and (iii) the prospects and challenges of fracture studies employing micro- and nanomechanical testing of brittle and ductile monolithic materials, and materials containing interfaces. Proven concepts and new endeavors are reported for the topics discussed in this overview. © 2017 Acta Materialia Inc.

We study the micro-mechanical behaviour of single-crystalline long-period-stacking ordered (LPSO) structures, α-Mg and bi-crystalline Mg/LPSO micro-pillars, all cut from the same Mg97Y2Zn1 (at.%) alloy. To investigate the deformation and co-deformation mechanisms of Mg-LPSO alloys we performed micro-pillar compression experiments with micro-pillars of an orientation inclined by 7°, 46° and 90° to (0001) orientation, respectively. Electron backscatter diffraction-assisted slip trace analysis and post-mortem transmission electron microscopy analysis showed predominant deformation by basal 〈a〉 dislocation slip in 46°(0001) and 7°(0001) oriented micro-pillars. In 7°(0001) oriented micro-pillars additional non-basal dislocation slip and the formation of micro shear bands along pyramidal planes were activated in the α-Mg and the LPSO structure, respectively. In 90°(0001) oriented micro-pillars 11¯001¯1¯20 prismatic slip was predominantly activated during the early deformation stages. The relative magnitude of the critical stresses depends on the crystal phase as well as the crystallographic orientation, i.e. the activated slip system. Specifically, basal 〈a〉 slip has the lowest critical resolved shear stress in both, α-Mg and the LPSO structure, while the CRSS of prismatic 〈a〉 slip is about 5 times higher than basal 〈a〉 slip in α-Mg and about 15 times higher than basal 〈a〉 slip in LPSO. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd

We unravel the nature of twin boundary-associated strengthening in Fe-Mn-C twinning-induced plasticity steel (TWIPs) by micro-pillar compression tests. Dislocation interactions with a coherent twin boundary and their role on strain hardening were investigated. The results indicate that twin-matrix bundles dynamically introduced by deformation twinning and their interaction with dislocations are required for strengthening Fe-Mn-C TWIPs, while single coherent twin boundaries enable dislocation transmission. Correlative studies on orientation dependent deformation mechanisms, detailed dislocation-twin boundary interactions, and the resulting local stress-strain responses suggest that twin boundary-associated strengthening is primarily caused by the reduction of the mean free dislocation path in nano-twinned microstructures. © 2018

In this work the fracture and corrosion behaviour of hot-dip aluminized steels is investigated in controlled dipping experiments which allowed to separately study the effects of Si in the Al bath (1–10 wt%) and the intermetallic phase thickness (5–30 µm). The addition of Si had no direct influence on the performance of the coating system for similar thickness values of the IMP seam, which in turn showed to be the dominant factor independent from the amount of Si. Thin intermetallic phase seams (< about 10 µm) exhibited more (about 5–10 per 100 µm interfacial length) but smaller cracks with a fishnet pattern on the outer Al-Si coating, which remained intact and interconnected until a tensile deformation of 15–20%. Thicker intermetallic phase seams resulted in less (about 2 per 100 µm interfacial length) but broader cracks perpendicular to the tensile direction, giving rise to a lamellar pattern on the Al-Si coating, which cracks and uncovers the steel already at strains below 10%, and readily flakes off leaving the steel substrate to accelerated corrosion in chloride environments. Our results indicate that the reduction of the intermetallic phase seam thickness remains the main target to improve the performance of hot-dip aluminized coated steel by combining appropriate Si additions with minimized dipping temperatures and times. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.

Flow behavior of a single-component yield stress fluid is addressed on the hydrodynamic level. A basic ingredient of the model is a coupling between fluctuations of density and velocity gradient via a Herschel-Bulkley-type constitutive model. Focusing on the limit of low shear rates and high densities, the model approximates well - but is not limited to - gently sheared hard sphere colloidal glasses, where solvent effects are negligible. A detailed analysis of the linearized hydrodynamic equations for fluctuations and the resulting cubic dispersion relation reveals the existence of a range of densities and shear rates with growing flow heterogeneity. In this regime, after an initial transient, the velocity and density fields monotonically reach a spatially inhomogeneous stationary profile, where regions of high shear rate and low density coexist with regions of low shear rate and high density. The steady state is thus maintained by a competition between shear-induced enhancement of density inhomogeneities and relaxation via overdamped sound waves. An analysis of the mechanical equilibrium condition provides a criterion for the existence of steady state solutions. The dynamical evolution of the system is discussed in detail for various boundary conditions, imposing either a constant velocity, shear rate, or stress at the walls. © 2018 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

To protect First-Wall components, made of reduced activation ferritic martensitic steel, against the plasma of future fusion reactors, tungsten coatings are a feasible option. The difference in coefficient of thermal expansion between the coating and the steel substrate can be compensated using functionally graded material layers. Such layers were successfully produced by vacuum plasma spraying. This technique reduces, however, the hardness of the substrate surface near zone. Modified spraying parameters moderate the hardness loss. The parameters may, though, affect also the layer bonding toughness which is evaluated in this work by four point bending tests. Furthermore, the layers behavior on First-Wall Mock‐ups and under different thermal loads is investigated by finite element simulations. The measurement of the layer adhesion indicates that the layer adhesion decreases only for modified spraying parameters that do not reduce the substrate hardness. It follows also from the toughness calculation that without layer residual stresses the toughness values depend on coating thickness. In regard to the Mock‐up behavior the simulations show that intermediate steps are necessary during heating and cooling to prevent artificial stresses and inelastic deformation. It is, however, not possible to avoid stresses and inelastic deformation completely as they originate from the residual stresses. © 2018

The purpose of this work is the development of a framework for the formulation of geometrically non-linear inelastic chemomechanical models for a mixture of multiple chemical components diffusing among multiple transforming solid phases. The focus here is on general model formulation. No specific model or application is pursued in this work. To this end, basic balance and constitutive relations from non-equilibrium thermodynamics and continuum mixture theory are combined with a phase-field-based description of multicomponent solid phases and their interfaces. Solid phase modeling is based in particular on a chemomechanical free energy and stress relaxation via the evolution of phase-specific concentration fields, order-parameter fields (e.g., related to chemical ordering, structural ordering, or defects), and local internal variables. At the mixture level, differences or contrasts in phase composition and phase local deformation in phase interface regions are treated as mixture internal variables. In this context, various phase interface models are considered. In the equilibrium limit, phase contrasts in composition and local deformation in the phase interface region are determined via bulk energy minimization. On the chemical side, the equilibrium limit of the current model formulation reduces to a multicomponent, multiphase, generalization of existing two-phase binary alloy interface equilibrium conditions (e.g., KKS). On the mechanical side, the equilibrium limit of one interface model considered represents a multiphase generalization of Reuss-Sachs conditions from mechanical homogenization theory. Analogously, other interface models considered represent generalizations of interface equilibrium conditions consistent with laminate and sharp-interface theory. In the last part of the work, selected existing models are formulated within the current framework as special cases and discussed in detail. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd

We present the first measurement of the strain rate sensitivity of the ideal dislocation slip transmission through a coherent Σ3{111} copper twin boundary. For this purpose we have deformed 129 geometrically identical samples at different strain rates. The micron-sized samples are either single crystalline (87 pillars) or contain one vertical Σ3{111} twin boundary (42 pillars). The strain rate sensitivity of the ideal slip transmission event is 0.015 ± 0.009. This value is considerably lower than the strain rate sensitivity observed for nano-twinned bulk materials, which is addressed to multiple simultaneously activated deformation processes present in the latter case. The activation volume of the ideal slip transmission points towards a cross-slip like transmission process of dislocations through the twin boundary. Furthermore, the high number of geometrically identical samples is used to discuss the ability to identify the strength distribution function of micropillars. © 2018 Acta Materialia Inc.

Dislocation multiplication in plasticity research is often connected to the picture of a Frank-Read source. Although it is known that this picture is not applicable after easy glide deformation, plasticity theories often assume Frank-Read-type models for dislocation multiplication. By analyzing discrete dislocation dynamics simulations in a bulk like setting, a new view on dislocation multiplication is presented. It is observed that only two mechanisms provide a source for dislocations: cross-slip and glissile junctions. Both source mechanisms involve a change of glide system and transfer of dislocation density (line length) from the primary dislocation(s) slip system(s) to the one of the new dislocation. The motion of dislocations is found to be highly restricted by other dislocations and therefore the contribution to plastic deformation of each individual dislocation is small. Also a substantial fraction of the physical dislocation line length is annihilated by the collinear reaction, lowering dislocation storage during plastic deformation. Furthermore, multiplication events involve the loss of a substantial amount of dislocation length and curvature (sudden changes in line orientation) due to the topology changes in the dislocation network of the respective mechanisms. The findings are discussed in light of continuum dislocation theories, which currently barely account for dislocation density transfer to other systems and the limited contribution of plastic strain from individual dislocations. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd

An in-situ SEM micromechanical test technique is used to investigate the response of a Ni-based single crystal superalloy to double shear loading. The present work shows that micro double shear testing can detect mechanical differences between interdendritic and dendritic regions with γ′-volume fractions of 77% and 72%, respectively, i.e., the interdendritic regions exhibit a larger flow stress than the dendritic regions. These micromechanical differences are apparent when micro double shear specimens are oriented for single-slip while they appear to be overshadowed by dislocation interactions, when multiple-slip is promoted. Sudden deformation events are observed to occur concomitantly with the formation of shear steps (localized plastic deformation) at the surface of the shear zones during single-slip. The micro double shear specimens oriented for single-slip show very low work-hardening. In contrast, much higher stresses are required to plastically deform micro double shear specimens oriented for multiple-slip which exhibit stronger work-hardening. No sudden deformation events could be detected for multiple-slip which results in a more homogeneous deformation of the shear zones (absence of localized plastic deformation). © 2018 Acta Materialia Inc.

For the purpose of good reproduction and prediction of creep deformation of nickel-base single crystal superalloys at intermediate temperatures, a phenomenological creep model is developed, which accounts for the typical γ/γ′ microstructure and the individual thermally activated elementary deformation processes in different phases. The internal stresses from γ/γ′ lattice mismatch and deformation heterogeneity are introduced through an efficient method. The strain hardening, the Orowan stress, the softening effect due to dislocation climb along γ/γ′ interfaces and the formation of dislocation ribbons, and the Kear-Wilsdorf-lock effect as key factors in the main flow rules are formulated properly. By taking the cube slip in slip systems and twinning mechanisms into account, the creep behavior for [110] and [111] loading directions are well captured. Without specific interaction and evolution of dislocations, the simulations of this model achieve a good agreement with experimental creep results and reproduce temperature, stress and crystallographic orientation dependences. It can also be used as the constitutive relation at material points in finite element calculations with complex boundary conditions in various components of superalloys to predict creep behavior and local stress distributions. © 2018 IOP Publishing Ltd.

The complex microstructure of segmented chips and the changing deformation mechanisms during the machining of the Ti-6Al-4V alloy for a given cutting tool have been explored. Chip geometry and microstructure were investigated for increasing volumes of material removed at a cutting speed at which the tool characteristically develops gradual flank wear. The degree of chip segmentation and deformation mode changed significantly as machining progressed from using a new tool towards a worn tool. Chip formation processes when machining near the end of the cutting tool life is characterised by increasing amounts of twinning formed through both tension and compression. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd

This study investigated the influence of segregations on hydrogen environment embrittlement (HEE) of AISI 304L type austenitic stainless steels. The microstructure of tensile specimens, that were fabricated from commercially available AISI 304L steels and tested by means of small strain-rate tensile tests in air as well as hydrogen gas at room temperature, was investigated by means of combined EDS and EBSD measurements. It was shown that two different austenitic stainless steels having the same nominal alloy composition can exhibit different susceptibilities to HEE due to segregation effects resulting from different production routes (continuous casting/electroslag remelting). Local segregation-related variations of the austenite stability were evaluated by thermodynamic and empirical calculations. The alloying element Ni exhibits pronounced segregation bands parallel to the rolling direction of the material, which strongly influences the local austenite stability. The latter was revealed by generating and evaluating two-dimensional distribution maps for the austenite stability. The formation of deformation-induced martensite was shown to be restricted to segregation bands with a low Ni content. Furthermore, it was shown that the formation of hydrogen induced surface cracks is strongly coupled with the existence of surface regions of low Ni content and accordingly low austenite stability. In addition, the growth behavior of hydrogen-induced cracks was linked to the segregation-related local austenite stability. © 2018 The Author(s).

Typical hexagonal engineering materials, such as magnesium and titanium, deform extensively through shear strains and crystallographic re-orientations associated with the nucleation, propagation, and growth of twins. To accurately predict their deformation behavior it is, therefore, critical for constitutive models to incorporate these mechanisms. In this work an integrated approach for modeling the concurrent dislocation mediated plasticity and heterogeneous twinning behavior in hexagonal materials is presented. A dislocation density-based crystal plasticity model is employed to predict the heterogeneous distribution of stress, strain and dislocation activity and is coupled to a phase field model for the description of the nucleation, propagation, and growth of {1012} tensile twins. A stochastic model is used to nucleate twins at grain boundaries, and their subsequent propagation and growth are driven by the Ginzburg-Landau relaxation of the system free energy which includes the orientation dependent twin interfacial energy and the elastic strain energy. Application of this novel and fully coupled model to the cases of magnesium single crystal, bicrystal, and polycrystal deformation is shown to demonstrate its predictive capability. Numerical simulations predict, in accordance with experimental observations, twin nucleation at grain boundaries followed by twin propagation into the grain interior and subsequent transverse twin thickening. Through this new combination of modeling approaches it is possible to systematically study the twin induced strain fields, the stress distribution along twin boundaries, and the spatial evolution of dislocation density within twins and parent grains. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd.

The determination of biomechanical properties of the cornea by a non-contact tonometry (NCT) examination requires a precise knowledge of the air puff generated in the device, which is applied to the cornea surface. In this study, a method is proposed to identify the resulting stress profile on the surface, which may be used to numerically solve an inverse problem to obtain the material properties. This method is based on an experimental characterization of the air puff created by the Corvis ST in combination with computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations, which are adjusted to the experimental data. The identified nozzle inlet pressure of approximately 25 kPa (188.5mmHg) is then used for a numerical influence study of the interaction between the air puff and the cornea deformation. Therefore, eleven cornea deformation states based on measurements are implemented in the CFD model. A more realistic model is also analyzed by the geometrical reproduction of the human face, which is used for a further influence study. The outcomes showed a dependence between the cornea deformation and the pressure as well as the shear stress distribution. However, quantitatively, the shear stress component can be considered of minor importance being approximately one hundred times smaller than the pressure. The examination with consideration of the human face demonstrates that the pressure and shear stress distributions are not rotationally symmetric in measurements on real humans, which indicates the requirement to include more complex stress distributions on the eye. We present the detailed stress distribution on the cornea during a non-contact tonometry examination, which is made accessible for further investigations in the future by analytical nonlinear functions. © 2018, Society for Experimental Mechanics.

We propose here a deformation-induced diffusive phase transformation mechanism occurring during shearing of γ′ ordered phase in a γ/γ′ single crystalline CoNi-based superalloy. Shearing involved the creation and motion of a high density of planar imperfections. Through correlative electron microscopy and atom probe tomography, we captured a superlattice intrinsic stacking fault (SISF) and its associated moving leading partial dislocation (LPD). The structure and composition of these imperfections reveal characteristic chemical – structural contrast. The SISF locally exhibits a D019 ordered structure coherently embedded in the L12 γ′ and enriched in W and Co. Interestingly, the LPD is enriched with Cr and Co, while the adjoining planes ahead of the LPD are enriched with Al. Quantitative analysis of the three-dimensional compositional field in the vicinity of imperfections sheds light onto a new in-plane diffusion mechanism as the LPD moves on specific {111} planes upon application of stress at high temperature. © 2018 Acta Materialia Inc.

An equiatomic high-entropy alloy CrMnFeCoNi was severely deformed at room temperature by high pressure torsion up to shear strains of about 170. Its microstructure and texture were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (X-ray line profile analysis and X-ray microdiffraction, respectively). It is shown that at a shear strain of about 20 a steady state domain/grain size of 24 nm and a dislocation density of 3 × 1016 m-2 is reached, while the twin density goes over a maximum of 2% at this strain. The texture developed is typical for sheared face-centred cubic metals, but it is extremely weak. The results are discussed in terms of the mechanisms of deformation, including dislocation slip, twinning and grain boundary sliding. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.

In this study we present and discuss the influence of compositional inhomogeneity on the mechanical behavior of an interstitially alloyed dual-phase non-equiatomic high-entropy alloy (Fe49.5Mn30Co10Cr10C0.5). Various processing routes including hot-rolling, homogenization, cold-rolling and recrystallization annealing were performed on the cast alloys to obtain samples in different compositional homogeneity states. Grain sizes of the alloys were also considered. Tensile testing and microstructural investigations reveal that the deformation behavior of the interstitial dual-phase high-entropy alloy samples varied significantly depending on the compositional homogeneity of the specimens probed. In the case of coarse-grains (∼300 μm) obtained for cast alloys without homogenization treatment, ductility and strain-hardening of the material was significantly reduced due to its compositional inhomogeneity. This detrimental effect was attributed to preferred deformation-driven phase transformation occurring in the Fe enriched regions with lower stacking fault energy, promoting early stress-strain localization. The grain-refined alloy (∼4 μm) with compositional heterogeneity which was obtained for recrystallization annealed alloys without homogenization treatment was characterized by almost total loss in work-hardening. This effect was attributed to large local shear strains due to the inhomogeneous planar slip. These insights demonstrate the essential role of compositional homogeneity through applying corresponding processing steps for the development of advanced high-entropy alloys. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.

We have developed a thermodynamically-consistent finite-deformation-based constitutive theory to describe strain induced grain boundary migration due to the heterogeneity of stored deformation energy in a plastically deformed polycrystalline cubic metal. Considering a representative volume element, a mesoscale continuum theory is developed based on the coupling between dislocation density-based crystal plasticity and phase field methods. Using the Taylor model-based homogenization method, a multiscale coupled finite-element and phase-field staggered time integration procedure is developed and implemented into the Abaqus/Standard finite element package via a user-defined material subroutine. The developed constitutive model is then used to perform numerical simulations of strain induced grain boundary migration in polycrystalline tantalum. The simulation results are shown to qualitatively and quantitatively agree with experimental results. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd.

Predicting, understanding, and controlling the mechanical behavior is the most important task when designing structural materials. Modern alloy systems—in which multiple deformation mechanisms, phases, and defects are introduced to overcome the inverse strength–ductility relationship—give raise to multiple possibilities for modifying the deformation behavior, rendering traditional, exclusively experimentally-based alloy development workflows inappropriate. For fast and efficient alloy design, it is therefore desirable to predict the mechanical performance of candidate alloys by simulation studies to replace time- and resource-consuming mechanical tests. Simulation tools suitable for this task need to correctly predict the mechanical behavior in dependence of alloy composition, microstructure, texture, phase fractions, and processing history. Here, an integrated computational materials engineering approach based on the open source software packages DREAM.3D and DAMASK (Düsseldorf Advanced Materials Simulation Kit) that enables such virtual material development is presented. More specific, our approach consists of the following three steps: (1) acquire statistical quantities that describe a microstructure, (2) build a representative volume element based on these quantities employing DREAM.3D, and (3) evaluate the representative volume using a predictive crystal plasticity material model provided by DAMASK. Exemplarily, these steps are here conducted for a high-manganese steel. © 2017, The Author(s).

Nanolayered metallic composites are much stronger than pure nanocrystalline metals due to their high density of hetero-interfaces. However, they are usually mechanically instable due to the deformation incompatibility among the soft and hard constituent layers promoting shear instability. Here we designed a hybrid material with a heterogeneous multi-nanolayer architecture. It consists of alternating 10 nm and 100 nm-thick Cu/Zr bilayers which deform compatibly in both stress and strain by utilizing the layers' intrinsic strength, strain hardening and thickness, an effect referred to as synergetic deformation. Micropillar tests show that the 6.4 GPa-hard 10 nm Cu/Zr bilayers and the 3.3 GPa 100 nm Cu layers deform in a compatible fashion up to 50% strain. Shear instabilities are entirely suppressed. Synergetic strengthening of 768 MPa (83% increase) compared to the rule of mixture is observed, reaching a total strength of 1.69 GPa. We present a model that serves as a design guideline for such synergetically deforming nano-hybrid materials. © 2017 The Author(s).

A CrMnFeCoNi high-entropy alloy was investigated by nanoindentation from room temperature to 400 °C in the nanocrystalline state and cast plus homogenized coarse-grained state. In the latter case a âŒ100)-orientated grain was selected by electron back scatter diffraction for nanoindentation. It was found that hardness decreases more strongly with increasing temperature than Young's modulus, especially for the coarse-grained state. The modulus of the nanocrystalline state was slightly higher than that of the coarse-grained one. For the coarse-grained sample a strong thermally activated deformation behavior was found up to 100-150 °C, followed by a diminishing thermally activated contribution at higher testing temperatures. For the nanocrystalline state, different temperature dependent deformation mechanisms are proposed. At low temperatures, the governing processes appear to be similar to those in the coarse-grained sample, but with increasing temperature, dislocation-grain boundary interactions likely become more dominant. Finally, at 400 °C, decomposition of the nanocrystalline alloy causes a further reduction in thermal activation. This is rationalized by a reduction of the deformation controlling internal length scale by precipitate formation in conjunction with a diffusional contribution. © 2017 Materials Research Society.

We investigated the deformation mechanisms of long period stacking ordered (LPSO) structures in an extruded Mg97Y2Zn1 (at%) alloy. Tensile deformation was performed in such a way that basal slip and kink band formation were inhibited. Slip trace analysis and transmission electron microscopy reveal a predominant activity of non-basal < a> slip. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.

The tensile properties of CrCoNi, a medium-entropy alloy, have been shown to be significantly better than those of CrMnFeCoNi, a high-entropy alloy. To understand the deformation mechanisms responsible for its superiority, tensile tests were performed on CrCoNi at liquid nitrogen temperature (77 K) and room temperature (293 K) and interrupted at different strains. Microstructural analyses by transmission electron microscopy showed that, during the early stage of plasticity, deformation occurs by the glide of 1/2<110> dislocations dissociated into 1/6<112> Shockley partials on {111} planes, similar to the behavior of CrMnFeCoNi. Measurements of the partial separations yielded a stacking fault energy of 22 ± 4 mJ m−2, which is ∼25% lower than that of CrMnFeCoNi. With increasing strain, nanotwinning appears as an additional deformation mechanism in CrCoNi. The critical resolved shear stress for twinning in CrCoNi with 16 μm grain size is 260 ± 30 MPa, roughly independent of temperature, and comparable to that of CrMnFeCoNi having similar grain size. However, the yield strength and work hardening rate of CrCoNi are higher than those of CrMnFeCoNi. Consequently, the twinning stress is reached earlier (at lower strains) in CrCoNi. This in turn results in an extended strain range where nanotwinning can provide high, steady work hardening, leading to the superior mechanical properties (ultimate strength, ductility, and toughness) of medium-entropy CrCoNi compared to high-entropy CrMnFeCoNi. © 2017 Acta Materialia Inc.

The implications of various size effects on the deformation behavior of and near grain boundaries is not yet fully understood. In this manuscript, slip transfer mechanisms through a general high angle grain boundary (HAGB) allowing for easy transfer are investigated in order to understand the size dependence of the dislocation-grain-boundary interaction. Complementary in situ micro compression tests on copper single and bi-crystals in the scanning electron microscope and with x-ray Laue microdiffraction were used to correlate the mechanical response with the evolving microstructure. It is shown that no dislocation pile-up is formed at the boundary. The lack of pile-up stresses results in a deformation process which is dominated by the initial dislocation source statistics. This is evidenced by similar size scaling of the single and bi-crystalline samples with the grain size being the characteristic length scale. © 2017 Acta Materialia Inc.

The thermal conductivity of heat-treatable steels is highly dependent on their thermo-mechanical history and the alloying degree. Besides phase transformations like the martensitic γ → α ′ or the degree of deformation, the precipitation of carbides exerts a strong influence on the thermal conductivity of these steels. In the current work, thermal and electrical conductivity of a 0.45 mass% C steel is investigated during an isothermal heat treatment at 700 ∘C and correlated with the precipitation kinetics of cementite. To include processes in the short-term as well as in the long-term range, annealing times from 1 s to 200 h are applied. This investigation includes microstructural characterization, diffusion simulations, and electrical and thermal conductivity measurements. The precipitation of carbides is connected with various microstructural processes which separately influence the thermophysical properties of the steel from the solution state to the short-term and long-term annealing states. In the early stages of cementite growth, an interstitial-dominated diffusion reaction takes place (carbon diffusion in the metastable condition of local equilibrium non-partitioning). Afterwards, substitutional-dominated diffusion controls the kinetics of the reaction. The electrical and thermal conductivity increase differently during the two stages of the carbide precipitation. The increment is associated to the binding of alloying elements into the carbides and to the reduction of the distortion of the martensitic matrix. Both factors increase the electron density and reduce the electron and phonon scattering. The correlation of the precipitation kinetics and the thermophysical properties are of general interest for the design of heat-treatable steels. © 2016, The Author(s).

Compression of micropillars is routinely used to measure the material response under uniaxial load. In bi-crystalline pillars an S-shaped grain-boundary together with an S-shaped pillar is often observed after deformation raising the question of its origin and consequences for stress-strain materials data. In addition to dislocation and grain-boundary based mechanisms, this observation can be caused by buckling and subsequent post-buckling deformation. Deviations from the classical pre- and post-buckling deformation behavior are assigned to imperfections, which are categorized in extrinsic and intrinsic imperfections in this work. In the present paper, the S-shaped actual deformation state is particularly promoted by an intrinsic imperfection, caused by a material heterogeneity (due to the bi-crystal arrangement). This kind of deformation behavior is investigated by micro-compression experiments on 7 × 7 × 21 μm3 sized bi-crystal copper pillars with nearly elastic (axial Young's modulus) homogeneity and identical Schmid factors for both grain orientations. Complementary finite element simulations are performed, in which also the role of friction and of an extrinsic imperfection in the form of initial misalignment of the loading on the S-shape are considered. There, a material model describing the flow stress distribution caused by a dislocation pile-up at the grain-boundary is applied. Finally, suggestions to prevent buckling and, thus, transversal post-buckling displacements during micropillar compression tests are given with the goal to extract engineering stress-strain curves. © 2016 Acta Materialia Inc.

The electron wave function experiences a phase modification at coherent transmission through a quantum dot. This transmission phase undergoes a characteristic shift of π when scanning through a Coulomb blockade resonance. Between successive resonances either a transmission phase lapse of π or a phase plateau is theoretically expected to occur depending on the parity of quantum dot states. Despite considerable experimental effort, this transmission phase behaviour has remained elusive for a large quantum dot. Here we report on transmission phase measurements across such a large quantum dot hosting hundreds of electrons. Scanning the transmission phase along 14 successive resonances with an original two-path interferometer, we observe both phase lapses and plateaus. We demonstrate that quantum dot deformation alters the sequence of phase lapses and plateaus via parity modifications of the involved quantum dot states. Our findings set a milestone towards an comprehensive understanding of the transmission phase of quantum dots. © 2017 The Author(s).

We investigated hydrogen embrittlement in Ni-based superalloy 718 by tensile testing at slow strain rate (10−4 s−1) under continuous electrochemical hydrogen charging. Hydrogen-assisted cracking mechanisms were studied via electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) analysis and electron channeling contrast imaging (ECCI). In order to elucidate the effects of stress or strain in the cracking mechanisms, material conditions with different strength levels were investigated, including samples in solution annealed (as water quenched) and 780 °C age-hardened states. The microstructure observations in the vicinity of the cracks enabled us to establish correlations between the microstructure, crack initiation sites, and crack propagation pathways. Fracture in the hydrogen-charged samples was dominated by localized plastic deformation. Strain-controlled transgranular cracking was caused by shear localization due to hydrogen-enhanced localized plasticity (HELP) and void nucleation and coalescence along {111} slip planes in both, the solution annealed and age-hardened materials. Stress-assisted intergranular cracking in the presence of hydrogen was only observed in the high strength age-hardened material, due to slip localization at grain boundaries, grain boundary triple junction cracking, and δ/γ-matrix interface cracking. To investigate the effect of δ-phase in crack propagation along grain boundaries, the over-aged state (aged at 870 °C) with different precipitation conditions for the δ-phase was also investigated. Observations confirmed that presence of δ-phase promotes hydrogen-induced intergranular failure by initializing micro-cracks from δ/γ interfaces. © 2017 Acta Materialia Inc.

We introduce a new class of high-entropy alloys (HEAs), i.e., quinary (five-component) dual-phase (DP) HEAs revealing transformation-induced plasticity (TRIP), designed by using a quantum mechanically based and experimentally validated approach. Ab initio simulations of thermodynamic phase stabilities of Co20Cr20Fe40-xMn20Nix (x = 0–20 at. %) HEAs were performed to screen for promising compositions showing the TRIP-DP effect. The theoretical predictions reveal several promising alloys, which have been cast and systematically characterized with respect to their room temperature phase constituents, microstructures, element distributions and compositional homogeneity, tensile properties and deformation mechanisms. The study demonstrates the strength of ab initio calculations to predict the behavior of multi-component HEAs on the macroscopic scale from the atomistic level. As a prototype example a non-equiatomic Co20Cr20Fe34Mn20Ni6 HEA, selected based on our ab initio simulations, reveals the TRIP-DP effect and hence exhibits higher tensile strength and strain-hardening ability compared to the corresponding equiatomic CoCrFeMnNi alloy. © 2017 Acta Materialia Inc.

The effect of film thickness as well as the influence of heat treatment on the deformation behavior of thin cobalt films (50–2000 nm) on polyimide substrates was investigated using various tensile tests. Straining under an optical light microscope provides information about the fracture strain and cracking behavior. The annealed films exhibit enhanced crack onset strains between 4 and 7% compared to the as-deposited films with fracture strains of 1–2%. This is partly achieved by a mechanically induced martensitic phase transformation of cobalt from the face-centered cubic (FCC) to the hexagonal-closed packed (HCP) phase. Thereby, it was shown that the heat treatment can be used to increase the amount of metastable FCC phase. Complementary synchrotron diffraction experiments were used to determine the lattice strains which initially increase during straining. After reaching a maximum, the lattice strains decrease in the case of the as-deposited films due to crack formation and in the case of the annealed films due the strain-induced phase transformation and localized plastic deformation in the form of necks. At higher engineering strains, the formation of cracks is also observed in the heat treated samples. Additionally, a decrease of the maximum lattice strain could be found for the HCP phase below a film thickness of 200 nm and grain size of 50 nm in the as-deposited films which is caused by cracking. © 2017

The size dependence of the mechanical behavior of a single crystalline equiatomic FeCrCoMnNi single phase high entropy alloy was studied using in situ SEM microcompression. Electron back-scattered diffraction was used in conjunction with high-resolution scanning electron microscopy to identify the dominant slip system activated for accommodating plastic flow. The scaling of the yield strength with the size of the micropillar is discussed in comparison with the size dependence observed in face-centered and body-centered cubic single crystalline metals. © 2016 Acta Materialia Inc.

Hydrogen and fuels derived from it will serve as the energy carriers of the future. The associated rapidly growing demand for hydrogen energy-related infrastructure materials has stimulated multiple engineering and scientific studies on the hydrogen embrittlement resistance of various groups of high performance alloys. Among these, high-Mn steels have received special attention owing to their excellent strength - ductility - cost relationship. However, hydrogen-induced delayed fracture has been reported to occur in deep-drawn cup specimens of some of these alloys. Driven by this challenge we present here an overview of the hydrogen embrittlement research carried out on high-Mn steels. The hydrogen embrittlement susceptibility of high-Mn steels is particularly sensitive to their chemical composition since the various alloying elements simultaneously affect the material's stacking fault energy, phase stability, hydrogen uptake behavior, surface oxide scales and interstitial diffusivity, all of which affect the hydrogen embrittlement susceptibility. Here, we discuss the contribution of each of these factors to the hydrogen embrittlement susceptibility of these steels and discuss pathways how certain embrittlement mechanisms can be hampered or even inhibited. Examples of positive effects of hydrogen on the tensile ductility are also introduced. © 2017 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC.

Reliable and predictive relationships between fundamental microstructural material properties and observable macroscopic mechanical behaviour are needed for the successful design of new materials. In this study we establish a link between physical properties that are defined on the atomic level and the deformation mechanisms of slip planes and interfaces that govern the mechanical behaviour of a metallic material. To accomplish this, the shear instability energy Γ is introduced, which can be determined via quantum mechanical ab initio calculations or other atomistic methods. The concept is based on a multilayer generalised stacking fault energy calculation and can be applied to distinguish the different shear deformation mechanisms occurring at TiAl interfaces during finite-temperature molecular dynamics simulations. We use the new parameter Γ to construct a deformation mechanism map for different interfaces occurring in this intermetallic. Furthermore, Γ can be used to convert the results of ab initio density functional theory calculations into those obtained with an embedded atom method type potential for TiAl. We propose to include this new physical parameter into material databases to apply it for the design of materials and microstructures, which so far mainly relies on single-crystal values for the unstable and stable stacking fault energy. © 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd.

We report on the strengthening and strain hardening mechanisms in an aged high-Mn lightweight steel (Fe-30.4Mn-8Al-1.2C, wt.%) studied by electron channeling contrast imaging (ECCI), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atom probe tomography (APT) and correlative TEM/APT. Upon isothermal annealing at 600 °C, nano-sized κ-carbides form, as characterized by TEM and APT. The resultant alloy exhibits high strength and excellent ductility accompanied by a high constant strain hardening rate. In comparison to the as-quenched κ-free state, the precipitation of κ-carbides leads to a significant increase in yield strength (∼480 MPa) without sacrificing much tensile elongation. To study the strengthening and strain hardening behavior of the precipitation-hardened material, deformation microstructures were analyzed at different strain levels. TEM and correlative TEM/APT results show that the κ-carbides are primarily sheared by lattice dislocations, gliding on the typical face-centered-cubic (fcc) slip system {111}<110>, leading to particle dissolution and solute segregation. Ordering strengthening is the predominant strengthening mechanism. As the deformation substructure is characterized by planar slip bands, we quantitatively studied the evolution of the slip band spacing during straining to understand the strain hardening behavior. A good agreement between the calculated flow stresses and the experimental data suggests that dynamic slip band refinement is the main strain hardening mechanism. The influence of κ-carbides on mechanical properties is discussed by comparing the results with that of the same alloy in the as-quenched, κ-free state. © 2017 Acta Materialia Inc.

A three-dimensional (3D) discrete dislocation dynamics (DDD) creep model is developed to investigate creep behavior under uniaxial tensile stress along the crystallographic [001] direction in Ni-base single crystal superalloys, which takes explicitly account of dislocation glide, climb and vacancy diffusion, but neglects phase transformation like rafting of γ′ precipitates. The vacancy diffusion model takes internal stresses by dislocations and mismatch strains into account and it is coupled to the dislocation dynamics model in a numerically efficient way. This model is helpful for understanding the fundamental creep mechanisms in superalloys and clarifying the effects of dislocation glide and climb on creep deformation. In cases where the precipitate cutting rarely occurs, e.g. due to the high anti-phase boundary energy and the lack of superdislocations, the dislocation glide in the γ matrix and the dislocation climb along the γ/γ′ interface dominate plastic deformation. The simulation results show that a high temperature or a high stress both promote dislocation motion and multiplication, so as to cause a large creep strain. Dislocation climb accelerated by high temperature only produces a small plastic strain, but relaxes the hardening caused by the filling γ channels and lets dislocations further glide and multiply. The strongest variation of vacancy concentration occurs in the horizontal channels, where more mixed dislocations exit and tend to climb. The increasing internal stresses due to the increasing dislocation density are easily overcome by dislocations under a high external stress that leads to a long-term dislocation glide accompanied by multiplication. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd

Atom probe tomography was employed to characterize the microstructure and C distribution in the white etching area (WEA) of a martensitic 100Cr6 bearing steel subjected to rolling contact fatigue. Different from its surrounding matrix where a plate-like martensitic structure prevails, the WEA exhibits equiaxed grains with a uniform grain size of about 10 nm. Significant C grain boundary enrichment (>7.5at.%) and an overall higher C concentration than the nominal value are observed in the WEA. These results suggest that the formation of WEA results from severe local plastic deformation that causes dissolution of carbides and the redistribution of C. © 2016 Elsevier Inc.

We present a systematic microstructure oriented mechanical property investigation for a newly developed class of transformation-induced plasticity-assisted dual-phase high-entropy alloys (TRIP-DP-HEAs) with varying grain sizes and phase fractions. The DP-HEAs in both, as-homogenized and recrystallized states consist of a face-centered cubic (FCC) matrix containing a high-density of stacking faults and a laminate hexagonal close-packed (HCP) phase. No elemental segregation was observed in grain interiors or at interfaces even down to near-atomic resolution, as confirmed by energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and atom probe tomography. The strength-ductility combinations of the recrystallized DP-HEAs (Fe50Mn30Co10Cr10) with varying FCC grain sizes and HCP phase fractions prior to deformation are superior to those of the recrystallized equiatomic single-phase Cantor reference HEA (Fe20Mn20Ni20Co20Cr20). The multiple deformation micro-mechanisms (including strain-induced transformation from FCC to HCP phase) and dynamic strain partitioning behavior among the two phases are revealed in detail. Both, strength and ductility of the DP-HEAs increase with decreasing the average FCC matrix grain size and increasing the HCP phase fraction prior to loading (in the range of 10–35%) due to the resulting enhanced stability of the FCC matrix. These insights are used to project some future directions for designing advanced TRIP-HEAs through the adjustment of the matrix phase's stability by alloy tuning and grain size effects. © 2017 Acta Materialia Inc.

Micro pillar compression is used to analyze the strain rate dependence of copper pillars containing a penetrable high-angle grain boundary via in situ compression tests at strain rates ranging from  10− 1 to 10− 4 s− 1. While the grain-boundary containing pillars exhibit a clear strain-rate dependence of m = 0.04 ± 0.02, their single crystal counterparts seem to have a weak strain rate dependence of m = 0.01 ± 0.01. The results strongly suggest that the movement of the dislocation line in the grain boundary, required to change its orientation from the incoming to the outgoing slip plane, is the critical process in deforming this kind of grain-boundary containing pillars. © 2017 Acta Materialia Inc.

It is the aim of this paper to show the mechanisms behind the experimental observations of rather smooth sigmoidal deformations in bi-crystal micropillar tests (in contrast to single crystal micro-compression tests) and to point out that the appearance of such deformation modes are a further reason for being careful when interpreting the force-axial displacement behavior in terms of stress-strain curves. Instabilities, i.e., buckling and subsequent post-buckling deformations, inhomogeneous strain fields and substantial deformations of the base as well as pronounced free surface effects are considered. The influences of imperfections and of friction as well as a possible clearance in the guidance of the loading device are taken into account, too. From these studies, the experimenter may get information how and with which limitations material parameters can be obtained from such compression tests in combination with simulations. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.

Uchic and co-workers were the first ones who performed uniaxial compression tests on micron-sized samples and inspired scientists worldwide to perform similar microcompression, tension, or bending experiments. The straining device is able to perform compression, tensile, or bending experiments. Complementary fine energy scans can be performed by inserting a tunable monochro-mator or a multi-colored rainbow filter in the white beam path in order to determine the energy of selected reflections and to further analyze the full strain tensor. For Laue diffraction experiments, a white X-ray beam consisting of a broad energy band pass is used. Nevertheless, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) just probes the sample surface and, therefore, is only able to monitor glide steps formed by dislocations escaping at the sample surface. These glide steps imply that the activation of discrete dislocation sources are responsible for the plastic deformation of metallic structures. © 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

Combinations of high strength and ductility are hard to attain in metals. Exceptions include materials exhibiting twinning-induced plasticity. To understand how the strength-ductility trade-off can be defeated, we apply in situ, and aberration-corrected scanning, transmission electron microscopy to examine deformation mechanisms in the medium-entropy alloy CrCoNi that exhibits one of the highest combinations of strength, ductility and toughness on record. Ab initio modelling suggests that it has negative stacking-fault energy at 0K and high propensity for twinning. With deformation we find that a three-dimensional (3D) hierarchical twin network forms from the activation of three twinning systems. This serves a dual function: conventional twin-boundary (TB) strengthening from blockage of dislocations impinging on TBs, coupled with the 3D twin network which offers pathways for dislocation glide along, and cross-slip between, intersecting TB-matrix interfaces. The stable twin architecture is not disrupted by interfacial dislocation glide, serving as a continuous source of strength, ductility and toughness. © 2017 The Author(s).

We discuss the modelling of grain boundary dynamics within an amplitude equations description, which is derived from classical density functional theory or the phase field crystal model. The relation between the conditions for periodicity of the system and coincidence site lattices at grain boundaries is investigated. Within the amplitude equations framework, we recover predictions of the geometrical model by Cahn and Taylor for coupled grain boundary motion, and find both (Formula presented.) and (Formula presented.) coupling. No spontaneous transition between these modes occurs due to restrictions related to the rotational invariance of the amplitude equations. Grain rotation due to coupled motion is also in agreement with theoretical predictions. Whereas linear elasticity is correctly captured by the amplitude equations model, open questions remain for the case of nonlinear deformations. © 2015 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Deformation twinning contributes to a high work-hardening rate through modification of the dislocation structure and a dynamic Hall-Petch effect in polycrystalline steel. Due to the well-defined compression axis and limited deformation volume of micro-pillars, micro-compression testing is a suitable method to investigate the mechanisms of deformation twinning and the interactions of dislocations with twin boundaries. The material investigated is an austenitic Fe-22 wt%Mn-0.6 wt%C twining-induced plasticity steel. Micro-pillars oriented preferentially for deformation twinning and dislocation glide are compressed and the activated deformation systems are characterized. We observe that deformation twinning induces higher flow stresses and a more unstable work-hardening behavior than dislocation glide, while dislocation glide dominated deformation results in a stable work-hardening behavior. The higher flow stresses and unstable work-hardening behavior in micro-pillars oriented for deformation twinning are assumed to be caused by the activation of secondary slip systems and accumulated plastic deformation. © 2017 Acta Materialia Inc.

Understanding the mechanism of martensitic transformation is of great importance in developing advanced high strength steels, especially TRansformation-Induced Plasticity (TRIP) steels. The TRIP effect leads to enhanced work-hardening rate, postponed onset of necking and excellent formability. In-situ transmission electron microscopy has been performed to systematically investigate the dynamic interactions between dislocations and α′ martensite at microscale. Local stress concentrations, e.g. from notches or dislocation pile-ups, render free edges and grain boundaries favorable nucleation sites for α′ martensite. Its growth leads to partial dislocation emission on two independent slip planes from the hetero-interface when the austenite matrix is initially free of dislocations. The kinematic analysis reveals that activating slip systems on two independent {111} planes of austenite are necessary in accommodating the interfacial mismatch strain. Full dislocation emission is generally observed inside of austenite regions that contain high density of dislocations. In both situations, phase boundary propagation generates large amounts of dislocations entering into the matrix, which renders the total deformation compatible and provide substantial strain hardening of the host phase. These moving dislocation sources enable plastic relaxation and prevent local damage accumulation by intense slipping on the softer side of the interfacial region. Thus, finely dispersed martensite distribution renders plastic deformation more uniform throughout the austenitic matrix, which explains the exceptional combination of strength and ductility of TRIP steels. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.

Structural phase transformation and dislocation slip are two important deformation modes of monocrystalline silicon. In the present work, we elucidate mechanisms of inhomogeneous elastic-plastic transition in spherical nanoindentation of monocrystalline silicon by means of molecular dynamics simulations. The Stillinger-Weber potential is utilized to present simultaneous phase transformations and dislocation activities in the silicon nanoindentation. And a bond angle analysis-based method is proposed to quantitatively clarify silicon phases. The influence of crystallographic orientation on the silicon nanoindentation is further addressed. Our simulation results indicate that prior to the “Pop-In” event, Si(0 1 0) undergoes inelastic deformation accompanied by the phase transformation from the Si-I to the Si-III/Si-XII, which is not occurred in Si(1 1 0) and Si(1 1 1). While the phase transformation from the Si-I to the bct-5 is the dominant mechanism of incipient plasticity for each crystallographic orientation, dislocation nucleation is also an operating deformation mode in the elastic-plastic transition of Si(0 1 0). Furthermore, interactions between phase transformations and dislocations are more pronounced in Si(0 1 0) than the other two crystallographic orientations. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.

The rotation polar (F) ∈ SO (3) arises as the unique orthogonal factor of the right polar decomposition F=polar(F)U of a given invertible matrix F∈ GL +(3). In the context of nonlinear elasticity Grioli (Boll Un Math Ital 2:252–255, 1940) discovered a geometric variational characterization of polar (F) as a unique energy-minimizing rotation. In preceding works, we have analyzed a generalization of Grioli’s variational approach with weights (material parameters) μ> 0 and μc≥ 0 (Grioli: μ= μc). The energy subject to minimization coincides with the Cosserat shear–stretch contribution arising in any geometrically nonlinear, isotropic and quadratic Cosserat continuum model formulated in the deformation gradient field F: = ∇ φ: Ω → GL +(3) and the microrotation field R: Ω → SO (3). The corresponding set of non-classical energy-minimizing rotations rpolarμ,μc±(F):=arg minR∈SO(3){Wμ,μc(R;F):=μ||sym(RTF-1)||2+μc||skew(RTF-1)||2}represents a new relaxed-polar mechanism. Our goal is to motivate this mechanism by presenting it in a relevant setting. To this end, we explicitly construct a deformation mapping φnano which models an idealized nanoindentation and compare the corresponding optimal rotation patterns rpolar1,0±(Fnano) with experimentally obtained 3D-EBSD measurements of the disorientation angle of lattice rotations due to a nanoindentation in solid copper. We observe that the non-classical relaxed-polar mechanism can produce interesting counter-rotations. A possible link between Cosserat theory and finite multiplicative plasticity theory on small scales is also explored. © 2017, Springer International Publishing AG.

A γ′ strengthened Co–Ti–Cr superalloy is presented with a mass density ∼14 % below that of typical Co–Al–W-based alloys. The lattice misfit is sufficiently low to form coherent cuboidal γ′ precipitates. Atom probe tomography shows that Cr partitions to the γ phase, but increases the γ′ volume fraction compared to a binary Co-Ti alloy to more than 60 %. The solubility of Cr in the γ′ phase is significantly higher than expected from previously published values. The γ′ solvus temperature is above 1100 °C. The yield strength shows a distinct increase above 600 °C surpassing that of Co–9Al–8W (at.%) and conventional Co-base superalloys, even more so when it is normalized by the mass density. © 2017 Acta Materialia Inc.

The present work describes the shear creep behavior of the superalloy LEK 94 at temperatures between 980 and 1050 °C and shear stresses between 50 and 140 MPa for loading on the macroscopic crystallographic shear system (MCSS) (011) . The strain rate versus strain curves show short primary and extended secondary creep regimes. We find an apparent activation energy for creep of Q app = 466 kJ/mol and a Norton-law stress exponent of n = 6. With scanning transmission electron microscopy, we characterize three material states that differ in temperature, applied stress, and accumulated strain/time. Rafting develops perpendicular to the maximum principal stress direction, γ channels fill with dislocations, superdislocations cut γ′ particles, and dislocation networks form at γ/γ′ interfaces. Our findings are in agreement with previous results for higherature and low-stress [001] and [110] tensile creep testing, and for shear creep testing of the superalloys CMSX-4 and CMSX-6 on the MCSSs (111) and (001)[100]. The parameters that characterize the evolving γ/γ′ microstructure and the evolving dislocation substructures depend on creep temperature, stress, strain, and time. © 2017 Materials Research Society.

The equiatomic high-entropy alloy (HEA), CrMnFeCoNi, has recently been shown to be microstructurally unstable, resulting in a multi-phase microstructure after intermediate-temperature annealing treatments. The decomposition occurs rapidly in the nanocrystalline (NC) state and after longer annealing times in coarse-grained states. To characterize the mechanical properties of differently annealed NC states containing multiple phases, nanoindentation was used. The results revealed besides drastic changes in hardness, also for the first time significant changes in the Young's modulus and strain rate sensitivity. Nanoindentation of NC HEAs is, therefore, a useful complementary screening tool with high potential as a high throughput approach to detect phase decomposition, which can also be used to qualitatively predict the long-term stability of single-phase HEAs. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd

The effect of a pre-strain on the plasticity of copper single crystals subjected to in situ microshear deformation in a scanning electron microscope (SEM) is investigated. Pre-strains of 6.5 and 20% are imposed using [1 0 0] tensile testing. During tensile pre-deformation, several slip systems are activated and irregularly spaced slip bands form. A trace analysis revealed the presence of several slip bands on the tensile specimen near the grips while one family of slip bands parallel to the (1 1 1) crystallographic plane were detected in the middle of the tensile specimen. From the middle of the pre-deformed tensile specimens double microshear samples were prepared using focused ion beam (FIB) machining such that the [0 -1 -1] (1 -1 1) slip system could be directly activated. The results show how microshear behavior reacts to different levels of tensile pre-deformation. Sudden deformation events (SDEs) are observed during microshear testing. The critical stress associated with the first SDE is shown to increase with increasing pre-deformation as a result of an increasing number of slip bands introduced during pre-deformation per shear zone. The results allow also to obtain information on the interaction between dislocations activated during microshearing ([0 -1 -1] (1 -1 1)) and those which were introduced during tensile pre-deformation ([1 0 -1] (1 1 1) and [1 -1 0] (1 1 1)). When these slip systems interact glissile junctions and Lomer-Cottrell locks are likely to form. In the light of this analysis, we rationalize the occurrence of sudden deformation events based on piled up dislocation assemblies which overcome Lomer-Cottrell lock barriers. © 2016 Acta Materialia Inc.

At low homologous temperatures (down to cryogenic temperatures), the CrMnFeCoNi high-entropy alloy possesses good combination of strength, work hardening rate (WHR), ductility, and fracture toughness. To improve understanding of the deformation mechanisms responsible for its mechanical properties, tensile tests were performed at liquid nitrogen and room temperature (77 K and 293 K) and interrupted at different strains to quantify the evolution of microstructure by transmission electron microscopy. Dislocation densities, and twin widths, their spacings, and volume fractions were determined. Nanotwins were first observed after true strains of ∼7.4% at 77 K and ∼25% at 293 K; at lower strains, deformation occurs by dislocation plasticity. The tensile stress at which twinning occurs is 720 ± 30 MPa, roughly independent of temperature, from which we deduce a critical resolved shear stress for twinning of 235 ± 10 MPa. In the regime where deformation occurs by dislocation plasticity, the shear modulus normalized WHR decreases with increasing strain at both 77 K and 293 K. Beyond ∼7.4% true strain, the WHR at 77 K remains constant at a high value of G/30 because twinning is activated, which progressively introduces new interfaces in the microstructure. In contrast, the WHR at room temperature continues to decrease with increasing strain because twinning is not activated until much later (close to fracture). Thus, the enhanced strength-ductility combination at 77 K compared to 293 K is primarily due to twinning starting earlier in the deformation process and providing additional work hardening. Consistent with this, when tensile specimens were pre-strained at 77 K to introduce nanotwins, and subsequently tested at 293 K, flow stress and ductility both increased compared to specimens that were not pre-strained. © 2016 Acta Materialia Inc.

Martensitic steels form a material class with a versatile range of properties that can be selected by varying the processing chain. In order to study and design the desired processing with the minimal experimental effort, modeling tools are required. In this work, a full processing cycle from quenching over tempering to mechanical testing is simulated with a single modeling framework that combines the features of the phase-field method and a coupled chemo-mechanical approach. In order to perform the mechanical testing, the mechanical part is extended to the large deformations case and coupled to crystal plasticity and a linear damage model. The quenching process is governed by the austenite-martensite transformation. In the tempering step, carbon segregation to the grain boundaries and the resulting cementite formation occur. During mechanical testing, the obtained material sample undergoes a large deformation that leads to local failure. The initial formation of the damage zones is observed to happen next to the carbides, while the final damage morphology follows the martensite microstructure. This multi-scale approach can be applied to design optimal microstructures dependent on processing and materials composition. © 2016 by the authors.

A variety of numerical approximation schemes for boundary value problems suffer from so-called locking-phenomena. It is well known that in such cases several finite element formulations exhibit poor convergence rates in the basic variables. A serious locking phenomenon can be observed in the case of anisotropic elasticity, due to high stiffness in preferred directions. The main goal of this paper is to overcome this locking problem in anisotropic hyperelasticity by introducing a novel mixed variational framework. Therefore we split the strain energy into two main parts, an isotropic and an anisotropic part. For the isotropic part we can apply different well-established approximation schemes and for the anisotropic part we apply a constant approximation of the deformation gradient or the right Cauchy–Green tensor. This additional constraint is attached to the strain energy function by a second-order tensorial Lagrange-multiplier, governed by a Simplified Kinematic for the Anisotropic part. As a matter of fact, for the tested boundary value problems the SKA-element based on quadratic ansatz functions for the displacements, performs excellent and behaves more robust than competitive formulations. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.

Polycrystalline samples with the Al0.693Cu0.201Fe0.106 composition, corresponding to the tetragonal P4/mnc ω-Al7Cu2Fe crystallographic structure, were synthesised by spark plasma sintering and deformed in compression under constant strain-rate conditions, ε = 2 × 10-4 s-1, over the temperature range 650 K-1000 K. A brittle-to-ductile transition is evidenced between 700 K and 750 K. The stress-strain curves exhibit a yield point followed by softening or steady state conditions only. The upper yield stress, σUYS, shows a strong temperature dependence suggesting that the rate controlling deformation mechanisms are highly thermally activated. The strain-rate sensitivity of stress characterised either by stress exponents, nexp, or by activation volumes, Vexp, was measured by the load relaxation technique. High nexp values, i.e., larger than 7, associated with low Vexp, typically smaller than 1 nm3, are measured. The Gibbs free activation energy, ΔG, deduced by integrating Vexp with respect to stress varies from nearly 2 eV at 790 K to 4 eV at 1000 K. Because plasticity of the ω-Al7Cu2Fe phase takes place at temperatures at which diffusion processes are considered as dominant, the results are interpreted in the frame of dislocation climb models proposed to account for high temperature plasticity of crystalline phases. © 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.

In the present work, we use a miniature test procedure to investigate the tensile creep behaviour of the single crystal superalloy ERBO1. We test precisely oriented [0 0 1], [1 1 0] and [1 1 1] creep specimens and determine the stress and the temperature dependence of characteristic creep rates in limited stress and temperature regimes, where the stress and temperature dependence of characteristic creep rates can be well described by power law and Arrhenius type of relations, with stress exponents n and apparent activation energies Qapp. n-values increase with stress and decrease with temperature. Qapp-values, on the other hand, increase with increasing temperature and decrease with increasing stress. Creep curve shapes gradually evolve from the high temperature low stress to the low temperature high stress (LTHS) regime. This implies that there is a gradual change in elementary deformation and softening mechanisms, which is qualitatively confirmed using transmission electron microscopy. While at high temperatures different loading directions only have a moderate influence on creep, there is a very strong effect of loading direction at low temperatures. The [1 1 0] tests show the fastest deformation rates and the shortest rupture times. In the LTHS creep regime, we confirm the double minimum (DM) type of creep behaviour, which was previously reported but never explained. Further work is required to rationalise DM-creep. The implications of this type of creep behaviour on scatter and on extrapolation of creep data is discussed in the light of previous results published in the literature. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The plastic co-deformation behavior at the homophase interfaces between the hard nanotwinned grain inclusions and the soft recrystallized matrix grains in a duplex-microstructured AISI 316L austenitic stainless steel is examined through the analysis of long-range orientation gradients within the matrix grains by electron backscatter diffraction and transmission electron microcopy. Our analysis reveals that the mechanical accommodation of homophase interfaces until a macroscopic strain of 22% is realized within a small area of soft grains (about four grains) adjacent to the homophase interface. The activation of deformation twinning in the first two grain layers results in the occurrence of a ‘hump’ in the orientation gradient profile. We ascribe this effect to the role of deformation twinning on the generation of geometrically necessary dislocations. The smooth profile of the orientation gradient amplitude within the first 10 grain layers indicates a gradual plastic accommodation of the homophase interfaces upon straining. As a consequence, damage nucleation at such interfaces is impeded, resulting in an enhanced ductility of the single phase duplex-microstructured steel. © 2016 The Author(s).

Low-alloyed TRIP steels are often used in the automotive industry due to their favorable mechanical properties such as high ductility and strength and their moderate production costs. These steels possess a heterogeneous multiphase microstructure, initially consisting of ferrite, bainite and retained austenite which is responsible for the mechanical properties. Upon deformation, a diffusionless, stress-induced, martensitic phase transformation from austenite to martensite is observed, enhancing ductility and strength. We focus on multi-scale methods in the sense of FE2 to describe the macroscopic behavior of low-alloyed TRIP-steels, because this approach allows for a straightforward inclusion of various influencing factors such as residual stress distribution, graded material properties which can hardly included in phenomenological descriptions of these heterogeneous multiphase materials. In order to allow for efficient computations, a simplified microstructure is used in an illustrative direct micro-macro simulation. The inelastic processes in the austenitic inclusions involve the phase transformation from austenite to martensite and the inelastic deformation of these two phases. The isotropic, rate-independent, hyperelastic-plastic material model of Hallberg et al. (IJP, 23, pp. 1213-1239, 2007), originally proposed for high-alloyed TRIP steel, is adopted here for the inclusion phase. Minor modifications of the model are proposed to improve its implementation and performance. The influence of various material parameters associated with the phase transformation on the evolution of retained austenite is studied for different homogeneous deformation states. The non-monotonic stress-state dependence observed in experiments is clearly captured by the model. A numerical two-scale calculation is carried out to enlighten the ductility enhancement in low-alloyed TRIP-steels due to the martensitic phase transformation.

We systematically study the morphology, size and dispersion of TiB2 particles formed in-situ from Fe-Ti-B based melts, as well as their chemical composition, crystal structure and mechanical properties. The effects of 5 wt.% additions of Cr, Ni, Co, Mo, W, Mn, Al, Si, V, Ta, Nb and Zr, respectively, as well as additional annealing treatments, were investigated in order to derive guidelines for the knowledge based alloy design of steels with an increased stiffness/density ratio and sufficiently high ductility. All alloying elements were found to increase the size of the coarse primary TiB2 particles, while Co led to the most homogeneous size distribution. The size of the eutectic TiB2 constituents was decreased by all alloying additions except Ni, while their aspect ratio was little affected. No clear relation between chemical composition, crystal structure and mechanical properties of the particles could be observed. Annealing of the as-cast alloys slightly increased the size of the primary particles, but at the same time strongly spheroidised the eutectics. Additions of Co and Cr appear thus as the best starting point for designing novel in-situ high modulus metal matrix composite steels, while using Mn in concert with thermo-mechanical processing is most suited to adapt the matrix' microstructure and optimise the particle/matrix co-deformation processes. © 2016 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The interfaces in lamellar TiAl alloys have a strong influence on the strength and deformability of the microstructure. It is widely accepted that their number and spacing can be used to tune these properties. However, the results of molecular dynamics simulations of sliding at γ/γ interfaces in lamellar TiAl alloys presented here suggest that important factors, namely the sequence of different interface types as well as the orientation of in-plane directions with respect to the loading axis, have to be included into meso-scale models. Simulations of bicrystal shear show significant differences in the deformation behavior of the different interfaces, as well as pronounced in-plane anisotropy of the shear strength of the individual interfaces. The critical stresses derived from bicrystal shear simulations are of the same order of magnitude as the one for nucleation and motion of twins in a γ-single crystal, showing that these mechanisms are competitive. In total four different deformation mechanisms, interface migration, twin nucleation and migration, dislocation nucleation, and rigid grain boundary sliding are observed. Their occurrence can be understood based on a multilayer generalized stacking fault energy analysis. This link between physical properties, geometry and deformation mechanism can provide guidelines for future alloy development. © 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Acta Materialia Inc.

Mo2BC nanocrystalline coatings were deposited on Cu substrates to compare their mechanical performance with bench-mark TiAlN, and pure Mo, Al and Al2O3 reference coatings. The Mo2BC coatings were characterized by X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy to analyze the microstructure. In order to study the damage behavior, the coatings were subjected to uniaxial tensile loading and the crack spacing with increasing strain was monitored using optical and scanning electron microscopy. Based on crack density measurements, the Mo2BC coatings were found to be significantly less prone to cracking than the bench-mark TiAlN coatings. The higher resistance to cracking arises from the electronic structure of the Mo2BC nanolaminates, which imparts moderate ductility to the deformation behavior. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.

Here, we applied hot-rolling in conjunction with direct quenching and partitioning (HDQ&P) processes with different rolling schedules to a low-C low-Si Al-added steel. Ferrite was introduced into the steel by intercritical rolling and air cooling after hot-rolling. The effect of intercritcal deformation on the microstructure evolution and mechanical properties was investigated. The promotion of austenite stabilization and the optimization of the TRIP effect due to a moderate degree of intercritical deformation were systematically explored. The results show that the addition of 1.46 wt% of Al can effectively promote ferrite formation. An intercritical deformation above 800 °C can result in a pronounced bimodal grain size distribution of ferrite and some elongated ferrite grains containing sub-grains. The residual strain states of both austenite and ferrite and the occurrence of bainite transformation jointly increase the retained austenite fraction due to its mechanical stabilization and the enhanced carbon partitioning into austenite from its surrounding phases. An intercritical deformation below 800 °C can profoundly increase the ferrite fraction and promote the recrystallization of deformed ferrite. The formation of this large fraction of ferrite enhances the carbon enrichment in the untransformed austenite and retards the bainite transformation during the partitioning process and finally enhances martensite transformation and decreases the retained austenite fraction. The efficient TRIP effect of retained austenite and the possible strain partitioning of bainite jointly improve the work hardening and formability of the steel and lead to the excellent mechanical properties with relatively high tensile strength (905 MPa), low yield ratio (0.60) and high total elongation (25.2%). © 2016 Elsevier B.V.

Low temperature (750°C) and high stress (800 MPa) creep curves of single crystal superalloy ERBO/1 tensile specimens loaded in the (001) direction show two creep rate minima. Strain rates decrease towards a first sharp local creep rate minimum at 0.1% strain (reached after 30 min). Then deformation rates increase and reach an intermediate maximum at 1% (reached after 1.5 h). Subsequently, strain rates decrease towards a global minimum at 5% (260 h), before tertiary creep (not considered in the present work) leads to final rupture. We combine high resolution miniature creep testing with diffraction contrast transmission electron microscopy and identify elementary processes which govern this double-minimum type of creep behavior. We provide new quantitative information on the evolution of microstructure during low temperature and high stress creep, focusing on γ-channel dislocation activity and stacking fault shear of the γ′-phase. We discuss our results in the light of previous work published in the literature and highlight areas in need of further work. © 2016 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The band structures of single and bilayer graphene with one-dimensional topological defects were calculated along the defect line, and appearance of the flat band near the Fermi level was observed. In addition, the influence of deformation (compression/expansion) on the flat band was studied. It was shown that compression across the grain boundary leads to disappearance of the flat band near the Fermi level, while the stretching along this direction does not significantly change the band structure. However, neither compression nor stretching along the grain boundary destroys the flat band. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.

In bond-order potentials (BOPs) for transition metals only the bonding mediated by the d electrons is included explicitly and the covalent part of the cohesive energy is evaluated using Slater-Koster dd bond integrals. However, the effect of s electrons with orbitals centered on atoms neighboring the corresponding dd bond is not necessarily negligible. As shown in Nguyen-Manh et al (2000 Phys. Rev. Lett. 85 4136) this can be taken into account via screening of the dd bond integrals. In a recent paper (Lin et al 2014 Model. Simul. Mater. Sci. Eng. 22 034002) the dd bond integrals were determined using a projection scheme utilizing atomic orbitals that give the best representation of the electronic wave functions in the calculations based on the density functional theory (DFT) (Madsen et al 2011 Phys. Rev. B 83 4119) and it was inferred that in this case the effect of s electrons was already included. In this paper we analyze this hypothesis by comparing studies employing BOPs with both unscreened and screened dd bond integrals. In all cases results are compared with calculations based on DFT and/or experiments. Studies of structures alternate to the bcc lattice, transformation paths that connect the bcc structure with fcc, simple cubic (sc), body centered tetragonal (bct) and hcp structures via continuously distorted configurations and calculations of γ-surfaces were all found to be insensitive to the screening of bond integrals. On the other hand, when the bond integrals are screened, formation energies of vacancies are improved and calculated phonon dispersion spectra reproduce the experimentally observed ones much better. Most importantly, dislocation core structure and dislocation glide are significantly different without and with screening of dd bond integrals. The latter lead to a much better agreement with available experiments. These findings suggest that the effect of s electrons on dd bonds, emulated by the screening of corresponding bond integrals, is the least significant when the lattice is distorted away from the ideal bcc structure homogeneously even if such distortion is large. On the other hand, when the distortion is local and inhomogeneous the impact of screening of the dd bond integrals is significant. In the studies presented in this paper such local inhomogeneities occur when phonons propagate through the lattice, at point defects and in the cores of dislocations. © 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Many of the three-dimensional photonic crystals occurring in the scales of insects have bicontinuous cubic structures. Their optical properties have been studied extensively, however little is known about their mechanical properties and their optical response under deformation. We demonstrated a mechanochromic effect by deforming the scales of a weevil and calculated the elastic, optical and mechanochromic (assuming homogeneous deformation) properties of the three types of bicontinuous cubic structures occurring in nature: P-structure (primitive), G-structure (gyroid) and D-structure (diamond). The results show that all investigated properties of these three structure types strongly depend on their geometry, structural parameters such as volume fractions of the two constituting phases and the directions of the incident light or applied stress, respectively. Interestingly, the mechanochromic simulation results predict that these structures may show blue-shift or even red-shift under compression along certain directions. Our results provide design guidelines for mechanochromic sensing materials operating in the elastic regime, including parameters such as sensitivity and direction of spectral shift. © 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd.

The multi-scale complexity of lath martensitic microstructures requires scale-bridging analyses to better understand the deformation mechanisms activated therein. In this study, plasticity in lath martensite is investigated by multi-field mapping of deformation-induced microstructure, topography, and strain evolution at different spatial resolution vs. field-of-view combinations. These investigations reveal site-specific initiation of dislocation activity within laths, as well as significant plastic accommodation in the vicinity of high angle block and packet boundaries. The observation of interface plasticity raises several questions regarding the role of thin inter-lath austenite films. Thus, accompanying transmission electron microscopy and synchrotron x-ray diffraction experiments are carried out to investigate the stability of these films to mechanical loading, and to discuss alternative boundary sliding mechanisms to explain the observed interface strain localization. © 2016 Acta Materialia Inc.

This work investigates the origin of creep dislocations in a Ni-base, single crystal superalloy subject to creep at an intermediate stress and temperature. Employing high angular resolution electron backscatter diffraction (HR-EBSD), electron channeling contrast imaging under controlled diffraction conditions (cECCI) and discrete dislocation dynamics (DDD) modelling, it is shown that low-angle boundaries - which correspond to dendrite boundaries or their residues after annealing - are not the major sources of creep dislocations. At the onset of creep deformation, they are the only active sources. Creep dislocations are emitted from them and percolate into the dislocation-depleted crystal. However, the percolation is very slow. As creep deformation proceeds, before the boundary-originated dislocations move further than a few micrometers away from their source boundary, individual dislocations that are spread throughout the undeformed microstructure become active and emit avalanches of creep dislocations in boundary-free regions, i.e. regions farther than a few micrometer away from boundaries. Upon their activation, the density of creep dislocations in boundary-free regions soars by two orders of magnitude; and the entire microstructure becomes deluged with creep dislocations. The total area of boundary-free regions is several times the total area of regions covered by boundary-originated creep dislocations. Therefore, the main sources of creep dislocations are not low-angle boundaries but individual, isolated dislocations in boundary-free regions. © 2016 Acta Materialia Inc.

Recently, it was established that a two-dimensional electron system can arise at the interface between two oxide insulators LaAlO3 and SrTiO3. This paradigmatic example exhibits metallic behaviors and magnetic properties between non-magnetic and insulating oxides. Despite a huge amount of theoretical and experimental work a thorough understanding is yet to be achieved. We analyzed the structural deformations of a LaAlO3 (001) slab induced by hydrogen adatoms and oxygen vacancies at its surface by means of density functional theory. Moreover, we investigated the influence of surface reconstruction on the density of states and determined the change of the local density of states at the Fermi level with increasing distance from the surface for bare LaAlO3 and for a conducting LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface. In addition, the Al-atom displacements and distortions of the TiO6-octahedra were estimated. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.

We present a study on the plastic deformation of single crystalline stochastic honeycombs under in-plane compression using a crystal plasticity constitutive description for face-centered cubic (fcc) materials, focusing on the very early stage of plastic deformation, and identifying the interplay between the crystallographic orientation and the cellular structure during plastic deformation. We observe that despite the stochastic structure, surprisingly, the slip system activations in the honeycombs are almost identical to their corresponding bulk single crystals at the early stage of the plastic deformation. On the other hand, however, the yield stresses of the honeycombs are nearly independent of their crystallographic orientations. Similar mechanical response is found in compression testing of nanoporous gold micro-pillars aligned with various crystallographic orientations. The macroscopic stress tensors of the honeycombs show the same anisotropy as their respective bulk single crystals. Locally, however, there is an appreciable fluctuation in the local stresses, which are even larger than for polycrystals. This explains why the Taylor/Schmid factor associated with the crystallographic orientation is less useful to estimate the yield stresses of the honeycombs than the bulk single crystals and polycrystals, and why the plastic deformation occurs at smaller strains in the honeycombs than their corresponding bulk single crystals. Besides these findings, the observations of the crystallographic reorientation suggest that conventional orientation analysis tools, such as inverse pole figure and related tools, would in general fail to study the plastic deformation mechanism of monocrystalline cellular materials. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc.

Aluminum single crystals with three different double-slip orientations and two aluminum bi-crystals - one with a high-angle grain boundary and one with a low-angle grain boundary - were cyclically deformed up to 100 cycles under constant displacement control. The distribution of the local strain and the local strain amplitudes was captured by in-situ digital image correlation (DIC). Dislocation structure analysis was performed by electron channeling contrast imaging (ECCI) and the evolution of local misorientations was recorded by high resolution electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). The DIC results show a homogeneous strain amplitude distribution in the single crystals while the measured strain amplitude in the low-angle grain boundary bi-crystal sample differs significantly. ECCI observations reveal the presence of dislocation cells elongated along the trace of the primary {111} slip plane in all investigated crystals and the formation of deformation bands parallel to the trace of {110} planes. Deformation bands (DB) were observed in all samples but their frequency and misorientation with respect to the matrix was found to sensitively depend on the crystal orientation and the local strain amplitude. Our results on the bi-crystals show that the grain orientation mainly determines the local stresses and therefore also the formation of the associated dislocation structures rather than the grain boundary character. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.

We present size-dependent crystal plasticity finite element simulations of the deformation microstructure, plastic flow and texture evolution in multilayered Cu-Nb composites during cold rolling. The model is based on a constitutive framework incorporating thermally activated dislocation slip, mechanical twinning and non-crystallographic shear banding. It also accounts for the dislocation density evolution and its dependence on initial grain size. By performing a series of quadricrystal simulations considering characteristic heterophase microstructures, the underlying micromechanics and texture of the composites are explored. Significant shear banding occurs in both phases, primarily determined by their initial orientations. For each phase, the activation of shear banding is also affected by the mechanical properties and orientations of the adjacent phase. For composites with an initial single layer thickness of 35 μm or 4 μm, the layer thickness reduction after rolling is non-uniform and the typical rolling textures for bulk pure metals develop in the respective phases. For the 75 nm initial single layer thickness composite, both phases are reduced uniformly in thickness and the initial orientations prevail. The predictions agree well with experimental observations in cold-rolled Cu-Nb thin films. The simulations reveal that for the composites with initial single layer thickness of micrometer scale, dislocation slip is the dominant deformation mechanism although shear banding increasingly carries the deformation at larger strains. For the samples with initial single layer thickness of a few tens of nanometers, shear banding and dislocation slip are the dominant mechanisms. This transition in deformation characteristics leads to different textures in micrometer- and nanometer-scaled multilayers. © 2016 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

{332} twinning, an unusual twinning mode in other body-centered cubic (bcc) metals and alloys, has been demonstrated to be a fundamental deformation mode in bcc metastable β titanium alloys. Recent studies suggest that this twinning mode plays an important role in enhancing the work hardening and thus improving the mechanical properties. Here, we studied the mechanism of this twinning mode in a metastable β Ti-36Nb-2Ta-3Zr (wt.%) alloy. Tensile tests were performed to induce the formation of {332} twins. By using electron backscatter diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and in situ scanning electron microscopy, the surface-to-bulk microstructures and the initiation and propagation of {332} twins were investigated. In addition to the previously reported high densities of straight dislocations within the twin, we have observed that an α″ martensite band is present near the surface adjacent to the twin. During annealing at 900°C, the α″ martensite band transforms into the adjacent twin rather than into the matrix, indicating that {332} twin nucleates within α″ martensite. Further evidence for this is the constitution of the twin in the initial stage of its formation, where the first portion formed consists of α″ martensite. During propagation, the twins propagating to the opposite directions can merge together when their lateral boundaries impinge on each other. Based on the experimental observations, an α″-assisted twinning mechanism is proposed and the origin of the dislocations within {332} twin is discussed accordingly. © 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Acta Materialia Inc.

We have adapted our genetic algorithm based optimization approach, originally developed to generate force field parameters from quantum mechanic reference data, to derive a first coarse grained force field for a MOF, taking the atomistic MOF-FF as a reference. On the example of the copper paddle-wheel based HKUST-1, a maximally coarse grained model, using a single bead for each three and four coordinated vertex, was developed as a proof of concept. By adding non-bonded interactions with a modified Buckingham potential, the resulting MOF-FF-CGNB is able to predict local deformation energies of the building blocks as well as bulk properties like the tbo vs. pto energy difference or elastic constants in a semi-quantitative way. As expected, the negative thermal expansion of HKUST-1 is not reproduced by the maximally coarse grained model. At the expense of atomic resolution, substantially larger systems (up to tens of nanometers in size) can be simulated with respect to structural and mechanical properties, bridging the gap to the mesoscale. As an example the deformation of the [111] surface of HKUST-1 by a "tip" could be computed without artifacts from periodic images. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2016.

The strain hardening mechanism of a high-Mn lightweight steel (Fe-30.4Mn-8Al-1.2C (wt%)) is investigated by electron channeling contrast imaging (ECCI) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The alloy is characterized by a constant high strain hardening rate accompanied by high strength and high ductility (ultimate tensile strength: 900 MPa, elongation to fracture: 68%). Deformation microstructures at different strain levels are studied in order to reveal and quantify the governing structural parameters at micro- and nanometer scales. As the material deforms mainly by planar dislocation slip causing the formation of slip bands, we quantitatively study the evolution of the slip band spacing during straining. The flow stress is calculated from the slip band spacing on the basis of the passing stress. The good agreement between the calculated values and the tensile test data shows dynamic slip band refinement as the main strain hardening mechanism, enabling the excellent mechanical properties. This novel strain hardening mechanism is based on the passing stress acting between co-planar slip bands in contrast to earlier attempts to explain the strain hardening in high-Mn lightweight steels that are based on grain subdivision by microbands. We discuss in detail the formation of the finely distributed slip bands and the gradual reduction of the spacing between them, leading to constantly high strain hardening. TEM investigations of the precipitation state in the as-quenched state show finely dispersed atomically ordered clusters (size < 2 nm). The influence of these zones on planar slip is discussed. © 2016 Acta Materialia Inc.

A new simulation environment is developed to simulate the evolution of microstructure and the corresponding flow stress during rolling. An orientation dependent crystal plasticity hardening model is coupled to grain evolution-, recovery-and recrystallization kinetics within a phase field framework. Hardening and softening kinetics are treated consecutive to differentiate between individual effects. Simulation results are compared to hot compression tests at 1373 K with a strain rate of 1 s-1. © The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2016.

A crystal plasticity (CP) modelling approach based on smooth-particle hydrodynamics (SPH) has been developed to study severe plastic deformation of crystalline materials. The method has been implemented and validated by comparing the stress distribution and stress evolution of several SPH and FEM simulations for an anisotropic elastic material. The findings show that the SPH method produces an efficient and numerically robust solution for solid-mechanics boundary value problems. Furthermore, the approach has been extended to incorporate a CP model and employed to simulate FCC polycrystals under the equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP) condition. It was found that the polycrystal contains four distinct regions with different deformation mechanisms. For the case that friction between deformable particles and boundary particles was neglected, more than one half of the grains suffered severe plastic deformation. The CP-SPH developed here thus is demonstrated to be a powerful tool to study grain refinement under severe plastic deformation. © 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd.

A dislocation density-based crystal plasticity model incorporating both transformation-induced plasticity (TRIP) and twinning-induced plasticity (TWIP) is presented. The approach is a physically-based model which reflects microstructure investigations of ε-martensite, twins and dislocation structures in high manganese steels. Validation of the model was conducted using experimental data for a TRIP/TWIP Fe-22Mn-0.6C steel. The model is able to predict, based on the difference in the stacking fault energies, the activation of TRIP and/or TWIP deformation mechanisms at different temperatures. © 2016 Acta Materialia Inc.

A phase field method for brittle fracture is formulated for a finite strain elasto-viscoplastic material using a novel obstacle phase field energy model. The obstacle energy model results in a crack profile with compact support, and thus gives a physically realistic description of the material behaviour at the vicinity of the crack tip. The resulting variational inequality is discretised by a finite element method, and is efficiently solved using a reduced space NEWTON method. The solution accuracy and numerical performance of this method is compared with a conventional phase field energy model for brittle fracture through representative examples, and a significant reduction in the numerical solution cost is demonstrated. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.

Plastic deformation of a model glass is investigated via large scale molecular dynamics simulations. The role of microscopic fluctuations of the structure for the deformation behavior is highlighted by demonstrating that statistically independent samples prepared via an identical protocol develop qualitatively distinct deformation paths. As a quantitative measure, the spatial distribution of the particle based excess volume is monitored via Voronoi tesselation. While the fluctuations of the thus defined single-particle based excess volume do not seem to show any signature of the strain field, a non-local definition of the excess volume clearly correlates with the observed shear deformation field. The distribution of the force acting on individual particles also shows a pattern strongly similar to that of the strain. In line with other studies, these results underline the importance of both the structural heterogeneities as well as the fluctuations of the locally acting forces and stresses for plastic deformation in amorphous solids. © 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA Medialab srl.

The pseudoelastic material behavior is one outstanding feature of shape memory alloys. This effect comes along with the forming of two plateaus in the stress/strain diagram of a tension test. Cyclic loading leads to a decrease particularly of the upper stress-plateau due to the evolution of plastic deformations which also implies fatigue of the material. In this work, we develop a variational material model which is able to predict the effect of fatigue using a novel approach for the dissipation potential that couples the evolutions of phase transformations and plastic strains. © 2015 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.

Chromium evaporation barriers are frequently used in solid oxide fuel cells to protect the porous cathode from chromium poisoning. Volatile chromium species are generated at the operation temperature of about 600-900 °C in a humid atmosphere for chromia scale forming steels as interconnect materials. In order to reduce this effect, barrier coatings are applied, often by atmospheric plasma spraying. However, also in these coatings microstructural changes as densification and in parallel formation of large pores have been observed. In order to clarify these mechanisms plasma sprayed Mn1.0 Co1.9Fe0.1O4 ("MCF") are deposited on ferritic steels and furthermore coated with a perovskite based contact layer as used in stack build-up. These coatings are annealed in air up to 1000 h and the microstructural changes and bending of the samples are studied. The results show increasing bending with increasing aging time. High temperature curvature measurements indicate that the amount of bending is not significantly dependent on temperature. As an explanation the creep deformation of the substrate/coating system at high temperatures due to compressive stress levels in the coating is given. The origin of the stress is related to phase changes in combination with the oxidation of the coatings. In addition, interdiffusion and densification processes are discussed. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.

The mechanical behavior of Cu-Cr nanolayered films and an alloy film of nominal composition Cu20Cr80 at.% was studied by microcompression testing at temperatures from 25 °C to 300 °C. Comparing nanolayered films, plastic deformation and failure occurred at consistently higher stress levels in the film with the smaller layer thicknesses. Plasticity in the nanolayered films always initiated in the softer Cu layers followed by a finite strain-hardening response in the stress-strain curves. Failure indicated by a strain-softening response following the higher peak strength due to shearing and tearing at columnar boundaries of Cr was observed in the nanolayered films at 25 °C and 100 °C. A transition from shearing and crack formation across the Cu-Cr interfaces leading to anomalous grain growth or beading of the nanocrystalline Cu layers was observed at elevated temperatures of 200 °C and 300 °C. On the other hand, the Cu20Cr80 at.% alloy film exhibited failure by columnar buckling consistently at elevated temperatures, but shearing promoted by buckling at the highest strengths among the films at ambient temperature. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A constitutive model for Transformation Induced Plasticity (TRIP) assisted steels is proposed that considers the elastic-plastic deformation of ferrite and austenite, the austenite-martensite phase transformation and the elastic deformation of martensite. Within this model, an explicit relation between martensite nucleation and plastic deformation within an austenite grain has been established based on the inverse Nishiyama-Wassermann (NW) relationship. In particular, strain-induced martensite nucleation and stress-assisted martensite growth have been included in one model with the help of a thermodynamic principle. With this model, we found consistently with experiment that the TRIP effect enhances the effective work hardening rate and hence is beneficial for improving strength and ductility of steels. The mechanical anisotropy produced by stress-assisted and strain-induced phase transformations are significantly different. Furthermore, we observed that austenite grains transform to martensite more quickly under tension than under compression. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

Cold-worked alloys exhibit high strength, but suffer from limited ductility. In contrast, Ti-based gum metal was reported to exhibit high strength combined with good ductility upon severe pre-straining. Motivated by this anomaly, we systematically studied the evolution of gum metal microstructure during severe cold working (swaging and rolling) and the resulting deformation and damage micro-mechanical mechanisms during follow-up tensile deformation. To this end, various experimental in situ and post-mortem methodologies are employed, including scanning electron microscopy imaging, high-resolution electron backscatter diffraction mapping and transmission electron microscopy. These observations reveal that intense grain refinement takes place through dislocation plasticity-dominated deformation banding upon cold working. The observed enhancement in crack blunting and failure resistance which prolongs the post-necking ductility of gum metal during follow-up tensile straining can be attributed to the deformation-induced development of local heterogeneities in texture and grain size. © 2015 Springer Science+Business Media New York

Microstructures of multi-phase alloys undergo morphological and crystallographic changes upon deformation, corresponding to the associated microstructural strain fields. The multiple length and time scales involved therein create immense complexity, especially when microstructural damage mechanisms are also activated. An understanding of the relationship between microstructure and damage initiation can often not be achieved by post-mortem microstructural characterization alone. Here, we present a novel multi-probe analysis approach. It couples various scanning electron microscopy methods to microscopic-digital image correlation (μ-DIC), to overcome various challenges associated with concurrent mapping of the deforming microstructure along with the associated microstrain fields. For this purpose a contrast- and resolution-optimized μ-DIC patterning method and a selective pattern/microstructure imaging strategy were developed. They jointly enable imaging of (i) microstructure-independent pattern maps and (ii) pattern-independent microstructure maps. We apply this approach here to the study of damage nucleation in ferrite/martensite dual-phase (DP) steel. The analyses provide four specific design guidelines for developing damage-resistant DP steels. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc.

Abstract An ultrafine-grained 304 austenitic 18 wt.% Cr-8 wt.% Ni stainless steel with a grain size of ∼270 nm was synthesized by accumulative rolling (67% total reduction) and annealing (550°C, 150 s). Uniaxial tensile testing at room temperature reveals an extremely high yield strength of 1890 ± 50 MPa and a tensile strength of 2050 ± 30 MPa, while the elongation reaches 6 ± 1%. Experimental characterization on samples with different grain sizes between 270 nm and 35 μm indicates that both, deformation twinning and martensitic phase transformation are significantly retarded with increasing grain refinement. A crystal plasticity finite element model incorporating a constitutive law reflecting the grain size-controlled dislocation slip and deformation twinning captures the micromechanical behavior of the steels with different grain sizes. Comparison of simulation and experiment shows that the deformation of ultrafine-grained 304 steels is dominated by the slip of partial dislocations, whereas for coarse-grained steels dislocation slip, twinning and martensite formation jointly contribute to the shape change. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc.

In the present paper we study the evolution of microstructure and texture during processing of Ni51Ti49 shape memory sheets using electron backscatter diffraction. Hot rolling results in a heterogeneous microstructure which reflects a temperature gradient in the sheet. Equiaxed and randomly oriented grains are observed close to the surface of the hot rolled sheet while the sheet interior shows a strong texture containing two main texture components {111}<110> and {110}<110> with grains elongated along the rolling direction. In contrast, cold rolling in combination with a recrystallization heat treatment produces a more homogeneous microstructure in terms of grain morphology and grain size. It also promotes a random grain orientation along the rolling and transverse directions while the normal direction shows a strong γ-fiber {111} texture. To get a better understanding of the elementary deformation mechanisms which control the texture evolution during rolling, textures assessed in the present study are compared with simulations reported in the literature. © 2015, Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The mechanical properties of TiAl alloys are very sensitive to the inherent microstructure. For an in-depth understanding of microstructural influences on mechanical properties a duplex type TNB (Nb-containing TiAl) alloy has been investigated. For varying the microstructure of this alloy controlled heat treatments (HT) have been performed with eight distinct maximum temperatures, ranging from 1230. °C to 1300. °C with a 10. °C temperature increment. The series of annealing processes resulted in duplex microstructures with a gradual change of the ratio of globular grains and lamellar colonies, keeping the global chemical composition unchanged. Microstructure of each sample was characterized using SEM and TEM before and after mechanical testing to correlate the morphology and microstructure features to the tensile properties. Quantitative data analysis from these results revealed how the evolution of duplex microstructures influences the room temperature tensile properties: i.e. the elastic stiffness, room temperature ductility, work hardening, fracture stress, and fracture strain. The results are discussed with respect to deformation mechanisms as understood from the tensile test results and fracture surface investigations. From the observed correlations between microstructure and properties an optimized constellation of globular and lamellar microstructure for relevant properties can be predicted. Furthermore, the required heat-treatment window for properties targeted can be defined. © 2015 Elsevier B.V.

In this paper we propose a numerical scheme for the calculation of stresses and corresponding consistent tangent moduli for hyperelastic material models, which are derived in terms of the first and second derivatives of a strain energy function. This numerical scheme provides a compact model-independent framework, which means that once the framework is implemented, any other hyperelastic material model can be incorporated by solely modifying the energy function. The method is based on the numerical calculation of strain energy derivatives using hyper-dual numbers and thus referred to as hyper-dual step derivative (HDSD). The HDSD does neither suffer from roundoff errors nor from truncation errors and is thereby a highly accurate method with high stability being insensitive to perturbation values. Furthermore, it enables the calculation of derivatives of arbitrary order. This is a great advantage compared to other numerical approaches as, e.g., the finite difference approximation which is highly sensitive with respect to the perturbation value and which thus only yields accurate approximations for a small regime of perturbation values. Another alternative, the complex-step derivative approximation enables highly accurate derivatives for a wide range of small perturbation values, but it only provides first derivatives and is thus not able to calculate stresses and moduli at once. In this paper, representative numerical examples using an anisotropic model are provided showing the performance of the proposed method. In detail, an introductory example shows the insensitivity with respect to the perturbation values and the higher accuracy compared to the finite difference scheme. Furthermore, examples demonstrate the robustness and simple implementation of the HDSD scheme in finite element software. It turns out that the higher accuracy compared with other approaches can still be achieved in reasonable computing time. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.

Abstract A large-strain plasticity framework is set up for phase-field simulations at the mesoscopic scale. The approach is based on an Eulerian setting with remeshing after each time step to keep a fixed structured mesh. Rotations, as evaluated from the antisymmetric part of the deformation gradient tensor, are integrated to capture the process history. Special emphasis is also given to the homogenization of the diffuse interface region to ensure the Hadamard jump condition and 2-dimensional scaling of the interface. The approach is applied to deformation of a polycrystal. © 2015 Elsevier B.V.

The autonomous repair mechanism of creep cavitation during high-temperature deformation has been investigated in Fe-Au and Fe-Au-B-N alloys. Combined electron-microscopy techniques and atom probe tomography reveal how the improved creep properties result from Au precipitation within the creep cavities, preferentially formed on grain boundaries oriented perpendicular to the applied stress. The selective precipitation of Au atoms at the free creep cavity surface results in pore filling, and thereby, autonomous repair of the creep damage. The large difference in atomic size between the Au and Fe strongly hampers the nucleation of precipitates in the matrix. As a result, the matrix acts as a reservoir for the supersaturated solute until damage occurs. Grain boundaries and dislocations are found to act as fast transport routes for solute gold from the matrix to the creep cavities. The mechanism responsible for the self-healing can be characterized by a simple model for cavity growth and cavity filling. © 2015, The Author(s).

Polycrystalline Cu samples 20 × 20 μm2 in size were cyclically bent inside a scanning electron microscope until fracture occurred. The microstructural changes were investigated by secondary electron imaging and electron backscatter diffraction. The in situ experiments revealed that, for the coarse-grained samples, it is not the external stress that dominates the cyclic deformation, but the local internal strength. This is in strong contrast to macroscopic bending samples, where deformation always happens near the fixed end of the bending beam and decreases constantly with increasing distance from the fixation. For micron-sized polycrystalline samples, the grain dimensions, dislocation density evolution and grain orientation (Taylor factor) can define the location of failure if the grain size and sample diameter become similar in size. A comparison with cyclic in situ tension-tension experiments (ratio of minimum stress to maximum stress R ≈ 0) reveals that cyclic bending experiments (R ≈ -1) undergo bulk-like fatigue deformation with extrusions/intrusions, in contrast to the experiments with R ≈ 0. Both the cyclic tension-tension and bending experiments can be described by a Basquin equation, although different mechanisms lead to failure of the samples. © 2014 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

During the last decade, integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) emerged as a field which aims to promote synergetic usage of formerly isolated simulation models, data and knowledge in materials science and engineering, in order to solve complex engineering problems. In our work, we applied the ICME approach to a crash box, a common automobile component crucial to passenger safety. A newly developed high manganese steel was selected as the material of the component and its crashworthiness was assessed by simulated and real drop tower tests. The crashworthiness of twinning-induced plasticity (TWIP) steel is intrinsically related to the strain hardening behavior caused by the combination of dislocation glide and deformation twinning. The relative contributions of those to the overall hardening behavior depend on the stacking fault energy (SFE) of the selected material. Both the deformation twinning mechanism and the stacking fault energy are individually well-researched topics, but especially for high-manganese steels, the determination of the stacking-fault energy and the occurrence of deformation twinning as a function of the SFE are crucial to understand the strain hardening behavior. We applied ab initio methods to calculate the stacking fault energy of the selected steel composition as an input to a recently developed strain hardening model which models deformation twinning based on the SFE-dependent dislocation mechanisms. This physically based material model is then applied to simulate a drop tower test in order to calculate the energy absorption capacity of the designed component. The results are in good agreement with experiments. The model chain links the crash performance to the SFE and hence to the chemical composition, which paves the way for computational materials design for crashworthiness. © 2014, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society.

Abstract Bulk and micro-pillar single crystals were used to investigate the twinning-induced plasticity mechanism in austenitic Fe-22 wt%Mn-0.6 wt%C TWIP steel. Compression of micro-pillars oriented either for deformation-induced twinning or for perfect dislocation glide was carried out for pillars with diameters in the range of 600 nm to 4 μm. The same size dependence of the critical resolved shear stress was observed for both orientations. The critical micro-pillar diameter for size-independent plasticity was approximately 7.6 μm. Partial dislocation-mediated formation of twins and ε-martensite was observed in micro-pillars oriented for twinning by transmission electron microscopy. The elastic-plastic transition in micro-pillars oriented for deformation twinning did not involve twinning, and dislocation-dislocation interactions were a necessary precondition for twin formation. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc.

Based on ab initio density functional theory (DFT) calculations we derive an analytical expression for the interplanar potential of grain boundaries and single crystals as a function of coupled tensile and shear displacements. This energy function captures even details of the grain boundary behaviour, such as the tension-softening of the shear instability of aluminium grain boundaries, with good accuracy. The good agreement between the analytical model and the DFT calculations is achieved by introducing two new characteristic parameters, namely the position of the generalised unstable stacking fault with respect to the stable stacking fault, and the ratio of stable and unstable generalised stacking fault energies. One of the potentials' parameters also serves as a criterion to judge if a grain boundary deforms via crack propagation or dislocation nucleation. We suggest this potential function for application in continuum models, where constitutive relationships for grain boundaries need to be derived from a sound physical model. © 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Significant progress in our understanding of plasticity in body-centered cubic (bcc) metals during the last decade has enabled rigorous multiscale modeling based on quantitative physical principles. Significant advances have been made at the atomistic level in the understanding of dislocation core structures and energetics associated with dislocation glide by using high-fidelity models originating from quantum mechanical principles. These simulations revealed important details about the influence of non-Schmid (nonglide) stresses on the mobility of screw dislocations in bcc metals that could be implemented to mesoscopic discrete dislocation simulations with atomistically informed dislocation mobility laws. First applications of dislocation dynamics simulations to studies of plasticity in small-scale bcc single crystals have been performed. Dislocation dynamics simulations inspired the development of continuum models based on advanced 3D dislocation density measures with evolution equations that naturally track dislocation motion. These advances open new opportunities and perspectives for future quantitative and materials-specific multiscale simulation methods to describe plastic deformation in bcc metals and their alloys. Copyright © 2015 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved.

The hydrogen distribution in a hydrogen-charged Fe-18Mn-1.2C (wt%) twinning-induced plasticity austenitic steel was studied by Scanning Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy (SKPFM). We observed that 1-2 days after the hydrogen-charging, hydrogen showed a higher activity at twin boundaries than inside the matrix. This result indicates that hydrogen at the twin boundaries is diffusible at room temperature, although the twin boundaries act as deeper trap sites compared to typical diffusible hydrogen trap sites such as dislocations. After about 2 weeks the hydrogen activity in the twin boundaries dropped and was indistinguishable from that in the matrix. These SKPFM results were supported by thermal desorption spectrometry and scanning electron microscopic observations of deformation-induced surface cracking parallel to deformation twin boundaries. With this joint approach, two main challenges in the field of hydrogen embrittlement research can be overcome, namely, the detection of hydrogen with high local and chemical sensitivity and the microstructure-dependent and spatially resolved observation of the kinetics of hydrogen desorption. © 2015 The Electrochemical Society.

We present a transmission electron microscopy study on the room temperature deformation mechanisms in a Mg97Y2Zn1 (at.%) alloy with long-period-stacking-order (LPSO) phase. The alloy consists of α-Mg matrix with platelet-shaped LPSO precipitates 3-5 nm thick and interdendritic LPSO (18R structures) phase grains. The interdendritic LPSO phase was found to deform either by kink-banding in conjunction with basal < a> slip or by basal < a> slip and the formation of dislocation walls. No orientation dependence of these different deformation modes was observed. The α-Mg matrix deforms by basal < a> slip and pyramidal < c + a> slip. No twinning was observed in the α-Mg matrix during room temperature deformation. The elastic modulus mismatch between α-Mg matrix and LPSO plates is suggested to be the main source for activating non-basal dislocations. The combination of the soft α-Mg matrix strengthened by LPSO precipitates and harder "bulk" interdendritic LPSO grains is suggested to contribute to the well-known good mechanical properties of Mg-LPSO alloys at room temperature. © 2014 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Understanding the relationship between the stacking-fault energy (SFE), deformation mechanisms, and strain-hardening behavior is important for alloying and design of high-Mn austenitic transformation- and twinning-induced plasticity (TRIP/TWIP) steels. The present study investigates the influence of SFE on the microstructural and strain-hardening evolution of three TRIP/TWIP alloys (Fe-22/25/28Mn-3Al-3Si wt.%). The SFE is increased by systemically increasing the Mn content from 22 to 28 wt.%. The Fe-22Mn-3Al-3Si alloy, with a SFE of 15 mJ m-2, deforms by planar dislocation glide and strain-induced εhcp-/αbcc-martensite formation which occurs from the onset of plastic deformation, resulting in improved work-hardening at low strains but lower total elongation. With an increased SFE of 21 mJ m-2 in the Fe-25Mn-3Al-3Si alloy, both mechanical twinning and εhcp-martensite formation are activated during deformation, and result in the largest elongation of the three alloys. A SFE of 39 mJ m-2 enables significant dislocation cross slip and suppresses εhcp-martensite formation, causing reduced work-hardening during the early stages of deformation in the Fe-28Mn-3Al-3Si alloy while mechanical twinning begins to enhance the strain-hardening after approximately 10% strain. The increase in SFE from 15 to 39 mJ m-2 results in significant changes in the deformation mechanisms and, at low strains, decreased work-hardening, but has a relatively small influence on strength and ductility. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc.

Abstract The yield strengths and deformation mechanisms of Cu-Cr nanolayered and alloyed thin films were studied by microcompression testing at elevated temperatures. The mechanical response of the films with alternating layers of Cu and Cr with sub-100 nm interlayer thicknesses and alloyed films of the same average composition was compared to determine the role of the interfaces on deformation. Higher resistance to plastic flow at elevated temperatures was exhibited by the nanolayered films with smaller interlayer thickness among the layered films, while the alloyed film revealed an anomalous increase in strength with temperature exhibiting a deformation mechanism similar to the pure Cr film. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc.

A fundamental knowledge and understanding of the adhesion behaviour of metal-polymer systems is important as interface failure leads to a complete breakdown of flexible devices. A combination of in situ atomic force microscopy for studying topological changes and in situ synchrotron based stress measurements both during film tensile testing were used to estimate the adhesion energy of a thin bilayer film. The film systems consisted of 50-200 nm Cu with a 10 nm Cr adhesion layer on 50 μm thick polyimide. If the Cu film thickness is decreased to 50 nm the Cr interlayer starts dominating the system behaviour. An apparent transition from plastic to predominantly brittle deformation behaviour of the Cu can be observed. Then, compressive stresses in the transverse direction are high enough to cause delamination and buckling of the Cr interlayer from the substrate. This opens a new route to induce buckling of a brittle interlayer between a ductile film and a compliant substrate which is used to determine the interfacial adhesion energy. © 2015 Taylor & Francis.

In the present work, we investigate the wear mechanisms of a Cu bi-crystal containing a random high angle grain boundary by means of molecular dynamics simulations. The underlying deformation behavior of the material is analyzed and further related to the observed characteristics of mechanical response and resulting morphology of the worn surface. In particular, the grain boundary-associated mechanisms are characterized by advanced analysis techniques for lattice defects. Our simulation results indicate that in addition to dislocation slip and dislocation-grain boundary interactions, grain boundary migration plays an important role in the plastic deformation of Cu bi-crystal. It is found that the wear behavior of Cu depends on the crystallographic orientation of the worn surface and can be altered quite significantly by the presence of a grain boundary. © 2015 Elsevier B.V.

An equiatomic CoCrFeMnNi high-entropy alloy (HEA), produced by arc melting and drop casting, was subjected to severe plastic deformation (SPD) using high-pressure torsion. This process induced substantial grain refinement in the coarse-grained casting leading to a grain size of approximately 50 nm. As a result, strength increased significantly to 1950 MPa, and hardness to ∼520 HV. Analyses using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and 3-dimensional atom probe tomography (3D-APT) showed that, after SPD, the alloy remained a true single-phase solid solution down to the atomic scale. Subsequent investigations characterized the evolution of mechanical properties and microstructure of this nanocrystalline HEA upon annealing. Isochronal (for 1 h) and isothermal heat treatments were performed followed by microhardness and tensile tests. The isochronal anneals led to a marked hardness increase with a maximum hardness of ∼630 HV at about 450 °C before softening set in at higher temperatures. The isothermal anneals, performed at this peak hardness temperature, revealed an additional hardness rise to a maximum of about 910 HV after 100 h. To clarify this unexpected annealing response, comprehensive microstructural analyses were performed using TEM and 3D-APT. New nano-scale phases were observed to form in the originally single-phase HEA. After times as short as 5 min at 450 °C, a NiMn phase and Cr-rich phase formed. With increasing annealing time, their volume fractions increased and a third phase, FeCo, also formed. It appears that the surfeit of grain boundaries in the nanocrystalline HEA offer many fast diffusion pathways and nucleation sites to facilitate this phase decomposition. The hardness increase, especially for the longer annealing times, can be attributed to these nano-scaled phases embedded in the HEA matrix. The present results give new valuable insights into the phase stability of single-phase high-entropy alloys as well as the mechanisms controlling the mechanical properties of nanostructured multiphase composites. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

In the characteristic γ/γ′ microstructure of single crystal superalloys, misfit stresses occur due to a significant lattice mismatch of those two phases. The magnitude of this lattice mismatch depends on the chemical composition of both phases as well as on temperature. Furthermore, the lattice mismatch of γ and γ′ phases can be either positive or negative in sign. The internal stresses caused by such lattice mismatch play a decisive role for the micromechanical processes that lead to the observed macroscopic athermal deformation behavior of these high-temperature alloys. Three-dimensional discrete dislocation dynamics (DDD) simulations are applied to investigate dislocation glide in γ matrix channels and shearing of γ′ precipitates by superdislocations under externally applied uniaxial stresses, by fully taking into account internal misfit stresses. Misfit stress fields are calculated by the fast Fourier transformation (FFT) method and hybridized with DDD simulations. For external loading along the crystallographic [001] direction of the single crystal, it was found that the different internal stress states for negative and positive lattice mismatch result in non-uniform dislocation movement and different dislocation patterns in horizontal and vertical γ matrix channels. Furthermore, positive lattice mismatch produces a lower deformation rate than negative lattice mismatch under the same tensile loading, but for an increasing magnitude of lattice mismatch, the deformation resistance always diminishes. Hence, the best deformation performance is expected to result from alloys with either small positive, or even better, vanishing lattice mismatch between γ and γ′ phase. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Deformation behavior and local strain evolutions upon loading and unloading of a bulk metallic glass (BMG) were systematically investigated by in situ digital image correlation (DIC). Distinct fluctuations and irreversible local strains were observed before the onset of macroscopic yielding. Statistical analysis shows that these fluctuations might be related to intrinsic structural heterogeneities, and that the evolution history and characteristics of local strain fields play an important role in the subsequent initiation of shear bands. Effects of sample size, pre-strain, and loading conditions were systematically analyzed in terms of the probability distributions of the resulting local strain fields. It is found that a higher degree of local shear strain heterogeneity corresponds to a more ductile stress-strain curve. Implications of these findings are discussed for the design of new materials. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd.

Three-dimensional discrete dislocation dynamics (DDD) simulations in combination with the phase-field method are performed to investigate the influence of different realistic Ni-base single crystal superalloy microstructures with the same volume fraction of γ;precipitates on plastic deformation at room temperature. The phase-field method is used to generate realistic microstructures as the boundary conditions for DDD simulations in which a constant high uniaxial tensile load is applied along different crystallographic directions. In addition, the lattice mismatch between the γand γ;phases is taken into account as a source of internal stresses. Due to the high antiphase boundary energy and the rare formation of superdislocations, precipitate cutting is not observed in the present simulations. Therefore, the plastic deformation is mainly caused by dislocation motion in γ; matrix channels. From a comparison of the macroscopic mechanical response and the dislocation evolution for different microstructures in each loading direction, we found that, for a given γ;phase volume fraction, the optimal microstructure should possess narrow and homogeneous γ; matrix channels. © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK.

Gum metal, a class of multifunctional β titanium alloys, has attracted much attention in the past decade due to its initially-proposed dislocation-free deformation mechanism based on giant faults, i.e., macroscopic planar defects carrying significant plastic strain. Special deformation features were observed in these alloys, such as plastic flow localization, pronounced surface steps, low work hardening, and large elongation. These were all proposed to arise from the special giant fault mechanism activated in the β-Ti matrix, while the initial presence or mechanically-induced formation of other phases was debated in several follow-up studies. Here, we set off with Ti-Nb-based gum metal samples with confirmed presence of large amounts of nanometer-sized hexagonal ω particles. Deformation experiments demonstrate all the features observed in the original reports, mentioned above. However, careful characterization reveals that the deformation bands (similar to giant faults) where plastic flow localized are "dislocation channels" that are depleted of ω phase. These channels are proposed to form by a {1 1 2}<1 1 1> dislocation dissociation mechanism, promoting reverse transformation of the ω phase into the β phase. The deformation induced ω-β transformation and the associated dislocation channeling process can explain the presence of the aforementioned special deformation features in the current gum metal. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc.

Thin metal films deposited on polymer substrates are used in flexible electronic devices such as flexible displays or printed memories. They are often fabricated as complicated multilayer structures. Understanding the mechanical behavior of the interface between the metal film and the substrate as well as the process of crack formation under global tension is important for producing reliable devices. In the present work, the deformation behavior of copper films (50-200 nm thick), bonded to polyimide directly or via a 10 nm chromium interlayer, is investigated by experimental analysis and computational simulations. The influence of the various copper film thicknesses and the usage of a brittle interlayer on the crack density as well as on the stress magnitude in the copper after saturation of the cracking process are studied with in situ tensile tests in a synchrotron and under an atomic force microscope. From the computational point of view, the evolution of the crack pattern is modeled as a stochastic process via finite element based cohesive zone simulations. Both, experiments and simulations show that the chromium interlayer dominates the deformation behavior. The interlayer forms cracks that induce a stress concentration in the overlying copper film. This behavior is more pronounced in the 50 nm than in the 200 nm copper films. © Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

We study the mechanisms of deformation driven chemical mixing in a metallic nanocomposite model system. More specific, we investigate shear banding at the atomic scale in an amorphous CuZr/ crystalline Cu nanolaminate, deformed by microindentation. Three CuZr/Cu multilayer systems (100 nm Cu/100 nm CuZr, 50 nm Cu/100 nm CuZr, and 10 nm Cu/100 nm CuZr) are fabricated to study the effect of layer thickness on shear band formation and deformation induced alloying. The chemical and structural evolution at different strain levels are traced by atom probe tomography and transmission electron microscopy combined with nano-beam diffraction mapping. The initially pure crystalline Cu and amorphous CuZr layers chemically mix by cross-phase shear banding after reaching a critical layer thickness. The Cu inside the shear bands develops a high dislocation density and can locally undergo transition to an amorphous state when sheared and mixed. We conclude that the severe deformation in the shear bands in the amorphous layer squeeze Zr atoms into the Cu dislocation cores in the Cu layers (thickness <5 nm), resulting in local chemical mixing. © 2015 Elsevier B.V.

Directionally solidified (DS) NiAl-Mo eutectic composites were strained to plastic strain values ranging from 0% to 12% to investigate the origin of the previously observed stochastic versus deterministic mechanical behaviors of Mo-alloy micropillars in terms of the development of dislocation structures at different pre-strain levels. The DS composites consist of long, [1 0 0] single-crystal Mo-alloy fibers with approximately square cross-sections embedded in a [1 0 0] single-crystal NiAl matrix. Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and computational stress state analysis were conducted for the current study. STEM of the as-grown samples (without pre-straining) reveal no dislocations in the investigated Mo-alloy fibers. In the NiAl matrix, on the other hand, a〈1 0 0〉-type dislocations exist in two orthogonal orientations: along the [1 0 0] Mo fiber axis, and wrapped around the fiber axis. They presumably form to accommodate the different thermal contractions of the two phases during cool down after eutectic solidification. At intermediate pre-strain levels (4-8%), a/2〈1 1 1〉-type dislocations are present in the Mo-alloy fibers and the pre-existing dislocations in the NiAl matrix seem to be swept toward the interphase boundary. Some of the dislocations in the Mo-alloy fibers appear to be transformed from a〈1 0 0〉-type dislocations present in the NiAl matrix. Subsequently, the transformed dislocations in the fibers propagate through the NiAl matrix as a〈1 1 1〉 dislocations and aid in initiating additional slip bands in adjacent fibers. Thereafter, co-deformation presumably occurs by 〈1 1 1〉 slip in both phases. With a further increase in the pre-strain level (>10%), multiple a/2〈1 1 1〉-type dislocations are observed in many locations in the Mo-alloy fibers. Interactions between these systems upon subsequent deformation could lead to stable junctions and persistent dislocation sources. The transition from stochastic to deterministic, bulk-like behavior in sub-micron Mo-alloy pillars may therefore be related to an increasing number of multiple a〈1 1 1〉 dislocation systems within the Mo fibers with increasing pre-strain, considering that the bulk-like behavior is governed by the forest hardening of these junctions. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc.

In situ micromechanical compression tests on Cu pillars were performed to evaluate the influence of twin boundaries on the mechanical behavior. The 1. μm sized Cu samples on a Si substrate prepared by focused ion beam milling were either single crystalline or contained 2-5 twin boundaries that were inclined to the compression direction. The strengths of the pillars vary, depending on the crystal orientation, associated twin boundary inclination and orientation of slip systems. Results show, that multiple slip systems are activated in each pillar. However, slip parallel to the twin boundaries prevails due to the long mean free path for dislocation movement. © 2015 Elsevier B.V.

The gradient crystal plasticity framework of Wulfinghoff et al. (Wulfinghoff et al. 2013 Int. J. Plasticity 51, 33-46. (doi:10.1016/j.ijplas.2013.07.001)), incorporating an equivalent plastic strain yeq and grain boundary (GB) yielding, is extended with GB hardening. By comparison to averaged results from many discrete dislocation dynamics (DDD) simulations of an aluminium-Type tricrystal under tensile loading, the new hardening parameter of the continuum model is calibrated. Although the GBs in the discrete simulations are impenetrable, an infinite GB yield strength, corresponding to microhard GB conditions, is not applicable in the continuum model. A combination of a finite GB yield strength with an isotropic bulk Voce hardening relation alone also fails to model the plastic strain profiles obtained by DDD. Instead, a finite GB yield strength in combination with GB hardening depending on the equivalent plastic strain at the GBs is shown to give a better agreement to DDD results. The differences in the plastic strain profiles obtained in DDD simulations by using different orientations of the central grain could not be captured. This indicates that the misorientationdependent elastic interaction of dislocations reaching over the GBs should also be included in the continuum model. © 2015 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

Dislocation junctions are considered to control the hardening behavior of crystalline materials during plastic deformation. Here the influence of the glissile junction on the plastic deformation of microscale samples is investigated, based on discrete dislocation dynamics simulation results. It is found that with increasing dislocation density ρ, sample size d, which can be collapsed into a single dimensionless parameter dρ, and an increasing number of activated slip systems due to different global crystallographic orientations, the glissile junction forms frequently and can bow out easily, acting as an effective source. The resulting new dislocations are mobile and contribute to the macroscopic plastic deformation on the order of 30-60%. In the size regime from 0.5 to 2 μm and dislocation densities in the range of 1012-1014m-2, the glissile junction is therefore an important source for generating mobile dislocation density. Furthermore a significant correlation between stress drops and activity of dislocations originating from glissile junctions is found. A rate formulation is proposed to include these findings in crystal plasticity or continuum dislocation density frameworks. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc. All rights reserved.

In situ micromechanical compression experiments in a transmission electron microscope enable the study and analysis of small-scale deformation behavior. The implementation of instrumented indenter systems allows measuring the force and displacement, providing additionally insights on sample strength and flow behavior. Using focused ion beam sample preparation, single- and bicrystalline specimens can be fabricated to study the influence of individual grain boundaries on the mechanical behavior. Taperless single crystalline and bicrystalline Cu compression pillars including a coherent twin boundary were deformed in scanning and conventional transmission electron microscopy mode to study the applicability of both techniques for examining dislocation dynamics and interaction with the boundary. Based on experimental results, possibilities and limitations of such experiments are critically discussed, including sample preparation, in situ annealing to remove ion beam-induced defects, imaging of dislocations, and acquisition of stress–strain data. Finally, an outlook is given on the potential of micromechanical in situ transmission electron microscopic experiments for analyzing the influence of grain boundaries on mechanical behavior. © 2015, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society.

We present the orientation dependent indentation response of pure magnesium during single grain indentation. A conical indenter and maximum loads between 50 mN and 900 mN were employed. Indent topographies were acquired by confocal microscopy. The indents were also characterized by electron backscatter orientation microscopy for their microstructures. Pronounced activation of specific twinning systems was observed around the impressions. The resulting data were compiled into the inverse pole figure presentation of indent microstructures and topographies after Zambaldi and Raabe, Acta Mater. (2010). Three-dimensional crystal plasticity finite element simulation of the indentation deformation supports the interpretation of the orientation dependent slip and twinning patterns around the indents. The match between the activation of observed and simulated twinning variants is discussed with respect to the conditions for nucleation and growth of extension twins. Furthermore, the compatibility of the twinning strains with the imposed deformation is discussed based on the expanding cavity model of indentation. The orientation dependent response of magnesium during indentation is compared to the literature data for indentation of alpha-titanium and beryllium. Recommendations are given on how to exploit the characteristic nature of the observed indentation patterns to rapidly assess the relative activity of deformation mechanisms and their critical shear stresses during alloy development. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc.

Phase transformations provide the most versatile access to the design of complex nanostructured alloys in terms of grain size, morphology, local chemical constitution etc. Here we study a special case of deformation induced phase transformation. More specifically, we investigate the atomistic mechanisms associated with dynamic strain-induced transformation (DSIT) in a dual-phased multicomponent iron-based alloy at high temperatures. DSIT phenomena and the associated secondary phase nucleation were observed at atomic scale using atom probe tomography. The obtained local chemical composition was used for simulating the nucleation process which revealed that DSIT, occurring during load exertion, proceeds by a diffusion-controlled nucleation process. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc.

In this study, tension experiments on Cu micro-samples at temperatures between 143 and 873 K were performed in order to analyze the influence of grain size, temperature and strain rate on the mechanical properties and fracture mode. The activation energy and evolution of the dislocation density have been analyzed to identify the deformation mechanisms. A transition from bulk-like to stochastic, small-scale behavior has been found with increasing grain size. Furthermore, dependent on the grain size and temperature a change from dislocation based plasticity to diffusion controlled deformation was observed. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc.

Dynamic strain aging arises from the interaction between solute atoms and matrix dislocations in strained metallic alloy. It initiates jerky dislocation motion and abrupt softening, causing negative strain rate sensitivity. This effect leads to instable flow phenomena at the macroscopic scale, appearing as a serrated stress-strain response and deformation banding. These macroscopic features are referred to as the Portevin-Le Chatelier effect (PLC). Here we study the atomistic origin of dynamic strain aging in an Al-4.8 at.% Mg alloy using atom probe tomography (APT) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Samples were prepared from as-cold rolled (90% thickness reduction), stabilized (120 °C, 20 h) and recrystallized sheets (400°C, 10 min), respectively. In the stabilized state, Mg was found to decorate <1 1 0> aligned dislocations with up to ∼12.5 at.%. Tensile tests in combination with thermographic and laser speckle observations were used to map the deformation bands for the site-specific extraction of APT samples from regions inside the PLC bands. We observed an asymmetrical Mg distribution along some of the dislocations, matching model predictions for high dislocation speeds at peak drag stress by Zhang and Curtin. In this case, the Mg distribution is characterized by depletion in the compressive regime above the dislocation slip plane and enrichment in the dilatation region below the slip plane. Mg also depletes in a tail-like form behind fast-moving dislocations, further promoting slip localization. © 2014 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Conventional martensitic steels have limited ductility due to insufficient microstructural strain-hardening and damage resistance mechanisms. It was recently demonstrated that the ductility and toughness of martensitic steels can be improved without sacrificing the strength, via partial reversion of the martensite back to austenite. These improvements were attributed to the presence of the transformation-induced plasticity (TRIP) effect of the austenite phase, and the precipitation hardening (maraging) effect in the martensitic matrix. However, a full micromechanical understanding of this ductilizing effect requires a systematic investigation of the interplay between the two phases, with regards to the underlying deformation and damage micromechanisms. For this purpose, in this work, a Fe-9Mn-3Ni-1.4Al-0.01C (mass%) medium-Mn TRIP maraging steel is produced and heat-treated under different reversion conditions to introduce well-controlled variations in the austenite-martensite nanolaminate microstructure. Uniaxial tension and impact tests are carried out and the microstructure is characterized using scanning and transmission electron microscopy based techniques and post mortem synchrotron X-ray diffraction analysis. The results reveal that (i) the strain partitioning between austenite and martensite is governed by a highly dynamical interplay of dislocation slip, deformation-induced phase transformation (i.e. causing the TRIP effect) and mechanical twinning (i.e. causing the twinning-induced plasticity effect); and (ii) the nanolaminate microstructure morphology leads to enhanced damage resistance. The presence of both effects results in enhanced strain-hardening capacity and damage resistance, and hence the enhanced ductility. © 2014 Acta Materialia Inc.

We introduce a liquid metallurgy synthesized, non-equiatomic Fe40Mn40Co10Cr10 high entropy alloy that is designed to undergo mechanically-induced twinning upon deformation at room temperature. Microstructure characterization, carried out using SEM, TEM and APT shows a homogeneous fcc structured single phase solid solution in the as-cast, hot-rolled and homogenized states. Investigations of the deformation substructures at specific strain levels with electron channeling contrast imaging (ECCI) combined with EBSD reveal a clear change in the deformation mechanisms of the designed alloy starting from dislocation slip to twinning as a function of strain. Such twinning induced plasticity has only been observed under cryogenic conditions in the equiatomic FeMnNiCoCr high entropy alloy. Thus, despite the decreased contribution of solid solution strengthening, the tensile properties of the introduced lean alloy at room temperature are found to be comparable to that of the well-studied five component FeMnNiCoCr system. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Slip is the main plastic deformation mechanism in titanium alloys at room temperature. This is especially so for near alpha titanium alloy like Ti-6Al-2Zr-1Mo-1V, which contains low beta stabilizing and high aluminum (alpha stabilizing) element additions. The effects of retained beta layers on slip transmission across α/β interfaces in Ti-6Al-2Zr-1Mo-1V during tensile deformation have been studied in the current work. High resolution scanning electron microscopy (HR-SEM) and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) techniques were used to study the deformation microstructure. The results indicate that the full Burgers crystal orientation relationship (OR) between the α and the thin retained β phase layers facilitates slip transition but is not the necessary requirement/restriction. Some novel slip trace morphologies that are characterized by deflection and bifurcation (fork-like morphology) are revealed in the retained β layers between two abutting α grains. The possible reasons for these different slip transmission patterns are analyzed by EBSD results and a schematic model is proposed. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

A NiAl-Cr(Mo) nanolayered composite exhibits improved room-temperature toughness in compression compared to its constituent phases, NiAl and Cr solid solution (Crss). Real-time in situ neutron diffraction and post-test microstructural observations show that the Crss layers with thickness of ∼400 nm can bear very high stresses and deform plastically before fracture, unlike in bulk form, where the Cr solid solution fractures in a relatively brittle fashion at significantly lower stresses, which contribute to the much higher toughness of the composite. © 2014 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

To tackle the problem of poor work hardening capacity and high initial deformation under low load in Hadfield manganese steel, the deformation behavior and microstructures under tensile and impact were investigated in a new high manganese austenitic steel Fe18Mn5Si0.35C (wt.%). The results show that this new steel has higher work hardening capacity at low and high strains than Hadfield manganese steel. Its impact deformation is much lower than that of Hadfield manganese steel. The easy occurrence and rapid increase of the amount of stress-induced ε martensitic transformation account for this unique properties in Fe18Mn5Si0.35C steel. The results indirectly confirm that the formation of distorted deformation twin leads to the anomalous work hardening in Hadfield manganese steel. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

We introduce the alloy design concepts of high performance austenitic FeMnAlC steels, namely, Simplex and alloys strengthened by nanoscale ordered k-carbides. Simplex steels are characterised by an outstanding strain hardening capacity at room temperature. This is attributed to the multiple stage strain hardening behaviour associated to dislocation substructure refinement and subsequent activation of deformation twinning, which leads to a steadily increase of the strain hardening. Al additions higher that 5 wt-% promote the precipitation of nanoscale L912 ordered precipitates (so called k-carbides) resulting in high strength (yield stress ∼ 1.0 GPa) and ductile (elongation to fracture 7sim; 30%) steels. Novel insights into dislocation-particle interactions in a Fe- 30.5Mn-8.0Al-1.2C (wt-%) steel strengthened by nanoscale k-carbides are discussed. © 2014 Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining.

Steels containing reverted nanoscale austenite (γRN) islands or films dispersed in a martensitic matrix show excellent strength, ductility and toughness. The underlying microstructural mechanisms responsible for these improvements are not yet understood, but are observed to be strongly connected to the γRN island or film size. Two main micromechanical effects are conceivable in this context, namely: (i) interaction of γRN with microcracks from the matrix (crack blunting or arresting); and (ii) deformation-induced phase transformation of γRN to martensite (TRIP effect). The focus here is on the latter phenomenon. To investigate size effects on γRN transformation independent of other factors that can influence austenite stability (composition, crystallographic orientation, defect density, surrounding phase, etc.), a model (TRIP-maraging steel) microstructure is designed with support from diffusion simulations (using DICTRA software) to have the same, homogeneous chemical composition in all γRN grains. Characterization is conducted by in-situ tension and bending experiments in conjunction with high-resolution electron backscatter diffraction mapping and scanning electron microscopy imaging, as well as post-mortem transmission electron microscopy and synchrotron X-ray diffraction analysis. Results reveal an unexpected "smaller is less stable" effect due to the size-dependent competition between mechanical twinning and deformation-induced phase transformation. © 2014 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introducing a soft crystalline phase into an amorphous alloy can promote the compound's ductility. Here we synthesized multilayered nanolaminates consisting of alternating amorphous Cu54Zr46 and nanocrystalline Cu layers. The Cu layer thickness was systematically varied in different samples. Mechanical loading was imposed by nanoindentation and micropillar compression. Increasing the Cu layer thickness from 10 to 100 nm led to a transition from sharp, cross-phase shear banding to gradual bending and co-deformation of the two layer types (amorphous/nanocrystalline). Specimens with a sequence of 100 nm amorphous Cu54Zr46 and 50 nm Cu layers show a compressive flow stress of 2.57 ± 0.21 GPa, matching the strength of pure CuZr metallic glass, hence exceeding the linear rule of mixtures. In pillar compression, 40% strain without fracture was achieved by the suppression of percolative shear band propagation. The results show that inserting a ductile nanocrystalline phase into a metallic glass prevents catastrophic shear banding. The mechanical response of such nanolaminates can be tuned by adjusting the layer thickness. © 2014 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Most solid-state phase transformations are accompanied by large deformations, stemming either from external load, transformation strains or plasticity. The consideration of such large deformations will affect the numerical treatment of such transformations. In this paper, we present a new scheme to embed large deformations in an explicit phase-field scheme and its implementation in the open-source framework OpenPhase. The suggested scheme combines the advantages of a spectral solver to calculate the mechanical boundary value problem in a small strain limit and an advection procedure to transport field variables over the calculation grid. Since the developed approach should be used for various sets of problems, e.g. simulations of thermodynamically driven phase transformations, the mechanic formulation is kept general. However, to ensure compatibility with phase-field methods using the concept of diffuse interface, the latter is treated with special care in the present work. © 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Excellent superplasticity (elongation ∼720%) is observed in a novel multi-component (Mn-S-Cr-Al alloyed) ultrahigh carbon steel during tensile testing at a strain rate of 2 × 10-3 s-1 and a temperature of 1053 K (just above the equilibrium austenite-pearlite transformation temperature). In order to understand superplasticity in this material and its strong Al dependence, the deformation-induced microstructure evolution is characterized at various length scales down to atomic resolution, using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, electron backscatter diffraction, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and atom probe tomography. The results reveal that 1 wt.% Al addition influences various microprocesses during deformation, e.g. it impedes Ostwald ripening of carbides, carbide dissolution, austenite nucleation and growth and void growth. As a result, the size of the austenite grains and voids remains relatively fine (< 10 μm) during superplastic deformation, and fine-grained superplasticity is enabled without premature failure. © 2013 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Due to the existence of constituents with strong distinction in mechanical properties, dual phase steels exhibit remarkably high-energy absorption along with excellent combination of strength and ductility. Furthermore, these constituents also affect deformation and microcrack formation in which various mechanisms can be observed. Thus, a reliable microstructure-based simulation approach for describing these deformations and microcrack initiation is needed. Under this framework of modeling scheme development, several work packages have been carried out. These work packages includes algorithm to generate the artificial microstructure model, a procedure to derive plasticity parameters for each constituent, and characterization of the microcrack formation and initiation criteria determination. However, due to the complexity of topic and in order to describe each work package in detail, this paper focused only on the approach to generate the artificial microstructure model and its application to predict the strain hardening behavior. The approach was based on the quantitative results of metallographic microstructure analysis and their statistical representation. The dual phase steel was first characterized by EBSD analysis to identify individual phase grain size distribution functions. The results were then input into a multiplicatively weighted Voronoi tessellation based algorithm to generate artificial microstructure geometry models. Afterwards, nanoindentation was performed to calibrate crystal plasticity parameters of ferrite and empirical approach based on local chemical composition was used to approximate flow curve of martensite. By assigning the artificial microstructure model with plasticity description of each constituent, strain-hardening behavior of DP-steel was then predicted. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The present work deals with the thermomechanical fatigue and low-cycle fatigue behavior of C-263 in two different material conditions. Microstructural characteristics and fracture modes are investigated with light and electron microscopy. The experimental results indicate that viscoplastic deformations depend on the heat treatment or rather on the current state of the microstructure. The measured data are used to adjust the parameters of a Chaboche type model and a fracture-mechanics based model for fatigue lifetime prediction. The Chaboche model is able to describe the essential phenomena of time and temperature dependent cyclic plasticity including the complex cyclic hardening during thermo-cyclic loading of both material conditions with a unique set of material parameters. This could be achieved by including an additional internal variable into the Chaboche model which accounts for changes in the precipitation microstructure during high temperature loading. Furthermore, the proposed lifetime model is well suited for a common fatigue life prediction of both investigated heats. The deformation and lifetime models are implemented into a user defined material routine. In this work, the material routine is applied for the lifetime prediction of a critical power plant component using the finite element method. © 2014 Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences.

Duplex and triplex microstructures consisting initially of ferrite plus carbide or of martensite, ferrite plus carbide, respectively, can undergo strain induced austenite formation during superplastic deformation at 30K below Ae1 (Ae1: equilibrium pearlite-austenite transformation temperature) and low strain rate (e.g. 2×10-3s-1). The effect leads to excellent superplasticity of the materials (elongation ~500%, flow stress < 50MPa) through fine austenite grains (~10μm). Using a deformation temperature just below Ae1 leads to a weak driving force for both, carbide dissolution and austenite formation. Thereby a sufficient volume fraction of carbides (1-2μm, 15vol%) is located at austenite grain boundaries suppressing austenite grain growth during superplastic deformation. Also, void nucleation and growth in the superplastic regime are slowed down within the newly transformed austenite plus carbide microstructure. In contrast, austenite grains and voids grow fast at a high deformation temperature (120K above Ae1). At a low deformation temperature (130K below Ae1), strain induced austenite formation does not occur and the nucleation of multiple voids at the ferrite-carbide interfaces becomes relevant. The fast growth of grains and voids as well as the formation of multiple voids can trigger premature failure during tensile testing in the superplastic regime. EBSD is used to analyze the microstructure evolution and void formation during superplastic deformation, revealing optimum microstructural and forming conditions for superplasticity of Mn-Si-Cr-C steels. The study reveals that excellent superplasticity can be maintained even at 120K above Ae1 by designing an appropriate initial duplex ferrite plus carbide microstructure. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.

A fine and uniform distribution of α phase at grain boundaries is expected to improve the mechanical properties and thermal stability of beta Ti alloys. To design high strength alloys, a key factor is the volume fraction of α, which is related to the concentration of the α phase. In this study, α-phase precipitates were characterized in an ultrafine-grained Ti-15Nb-2Mo-2Zr-1Sn (at%) alloy processed by severe plastic deformation in two different ways (hot drawing and cold rolling in conjunction with annealing). A combination of transmission Kikuchi diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and atom-probe tomography revealed that ultra-fine α precipitates precipitate at grain boundaries in hot-drawn material or at sub-grain boundaries in the cold-rolled samples. The Nb concentrations of α phases formed were not those expected for an equilibrium state, which highlights the importance of understanding the chemistry of the α precipitates for engineering microstructures in advanced Ti alloys. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.

We perform microshear experiments on Au single crystals, directly imposing shear loading on the microscopic crystallographic h1-10i {111} slip system. We use a focused ion beam machined micro-double shear specimen which we load with a flat punch indenter inside a scanning electron microscope. Our method yields reproducible mechanical data (e.g. critical shear stresses of 63.5 ± 2.5 MPa). We study small-scale plasticity up to high strains (>50%) at constant slip geometry and document localized plastic deformation and sudden plastic deformation events. Strain bursts are observed, which can be related to the formation of new shear bands. Alternatively, they can result from sudden shear strain accumulation events in existing shear bands. Due to the stochastic nature of plastic deformation, the nature and the number of strain bursts can vary. We show and discuss how our in situ test technique captures these effects and how this affects the corresponding load-displacement curves. We discuss the advantages and inconveniences of our microshear test technique compared to other small-scale testing methods and relate our mechanical results to previous results reported for the micromechanical behavior of Au. © 2013 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Nanoindentation revealed a number of effects, like pop-in behavior or indentation size effects, that are very different from the classical mechanical behavior of bulk materials and that have therefore sparked a lot of research activities. In this contribution a multiscale approach is followed to understand the mechanisms behind this peculiar material behavior during nanoindentation. Atomistic simulations reveal the mechanisms of dislocation nucleation and multiplication during the very start of plastic deformation. From mesoscale dislocation density based models we gain advanced insight into how plastic zones develop and spread through materials with heterogeneous dislocation microstructures. Crystal plasticity models on the macroscale, finally, are able to reproduce load-indentation curves and remaining imprint topologies in a way that is directly comparable to experimental results and, thus, allows for the determination of true material properties by inverse methods. The complex interplay of the deformation mechanisms occurring on different length scales is described and the necessity to introduce the knowledge about fundamental deformation mechanisms into models on higher length scales is highlighted. © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014.

High-entropy alloys are equiatomic, multi-element systems that can crystallize as a single phase, despite containing multiple elements with different crystal structures. A rationale for this is that the configurational entropy contribution to the total free energy in alloys with five or more major elements may stabilize the solid-solution state relative to multiphase microstructures. We examined a five-element high-entropy alloy, CrMnFeCoNi, which forms a single-phase face-centered cubic solid solution, and found it to have exceptional damage tolerance with tensile strengths above 1 GPa and fracture toughness values exceeding 200 MPa·m1/2. Furthermore, its mechanical properties actually improve at cryogenic temperatures; we attribute this to a transition from planar-slip dislocation activity at room temperature to deformation by mechanical nanotwinning with decreasing temperature, which results in continuous steady strain hardening. © 2014, American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights reserved.

Superelastic Shape Memory Alloys (SMA) are typically used in applications where the martensitic phase transformation is exploited for its reversible, large deformation such as medical applications (e.g. stents). In this work, we focus on the mechanical and thermal behavior of a Nickel-Titanium SMA strip in bending mode. One possible application of this mode is to provide a restoring force when used in joints of SMA wire actuator systems making the need for an antagonistic SMA actuator redundant. In these applications mentioned above, typically only the mechanical properties are of interest while the temperature is considered constant, even though the martensitic phase transformation in SMA is a thermomechanically coupled process. As a part of the DFG (German Research Association) Priority Programme SPP1599 "Ferroic Cooling" which aims at advancing the development of solid state cooling devices, we have an equally large interest for the thermal evolution of Nickel-Titanium SMA during deformation and its induced phase transformation. In this paper we investigate the thermal and the mechanical response of a SMA beam during bending experiments in which the deformation is induced by holding one end of a SMA strip fixed while the other end is subject to a prescribed deflection. Sensors and high speed thermal cameras are used to capture reaction forces, deformations and temperature changes. We compare these experimental results with numerical simulation results obtained from Finite Element simulations where a thermo-mechanically coupled SMA model is implemented into a finite deformation framework. © 2014 by ASME.

Micrometer-sized compression pillars containing a grain boundary are investigated to better understand under which conditions grain boundaries have a strengthening effect. The compression experiments were performed on focused ion beam fabricated micrometer-sized bicrystalline Cu pillars including either a large-angle grain boundary (LAGB) or a coherent twin boundary (CTB) parallel to the compression axis and additionally on single-crystalline reference samples. Pillars containing a LAGB show increased strength, stronger hardening and smaller load drops compared to single crystals and exhibit a bent boundary and pillar shape. Samples with a CTB show no major difference in stress-strain data compared to the corresponding single-crystalline samples. This is due to the special orientation and symmetry of the twin boundary and is reflected in a characteristic pillar shape after deformation. The experimental findings can be related to the dislocation-boundary interactions at the different grain boundaries and are compared with three-dimensional discrete dislocation dynamics simulations. © 2014 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This study investigates the stress-induced formation of martensite during nanoindentation of an austenitic NiTi shape memory alloy, where stress-induced martensite is stable at room temperature. An individual grain with a [1 1 1] surface normal was selected for spherical ex situ and in situ nanoindentation in a scanning electron microscope. The in situ load-displacement curves show several pop-ins which occur concomitantly with the formation of traces around the contact zone between the indenter tip and the sample. These traces exhibit a threefold symmetry around the remnant indent. A detailed study of the indentation-induced surface relief by atomic force microscopy before and after shape recovery allows to identify the formation of six twinned martensite plates. Post-mortem microstructural characterization shows that these twinned martensite plates are growing as the applied load is increasing. The activation of the experimentally observed twinned martensite plates is rationalized by analytical calculations of resolved shear stress and mechanical interaction energy density. Finally, the in situ nanoindentation results in combination with the post-mortem microstructural characterization show that the most likely deformation mechanism responsible for pop-in events corresponds to sudden increases of the thicknesses of twinned martensite plates. © 2014 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Grain refinement through severe plastic deformation enables synthesis of ultrahigh-strength nanostructured materials. Two challenges exist in that context: First, deformation-driven grain refinement is limited by dynamic dislocation recovery and crystal coarsening due to capillary driving forces; second, grain boundary sliding and hence softening occur when the grain size approaches several nanometers. Here, both challenges have been overcome by severe drawing of a pearlitic steel wire (pearlite: lamellar structure of alternating iron and iron carbide layers). First, at large strains the carbide phase dissolves via mechanical alloying, rendering the initially two-phase pearlite structure into a carbon-supersaturated iron phase. This carbon-rich iron phase evolves into a columnar nanoscaled subgrain structure which topologically prevents grain boundary sliding. Second, Gibbs segregation of the supersaturated carbon to the iron subgrain boundaries reduces their interface energy, hence reducing the driving force for dynamic recovery and crystal coarsening. Thus, a stable cross-sectional subgrain size <10nm is achieved. These two effects lead to a stable columnar nanosized grain structure that impedes dislocation motion and enables an extreme tensile strength of 7 GPa, making this alloy the strongest ductile bulk material known. © 2014 American Physical Society.

An extremely robust and efficient numerical approximation of material and spatial tangent moduli at finite strains is presented that can be easily implemented within standard FEM software. This method is based on the complex-step derivative approximation (CSDA) approach. The CSDA is proved to be of second order accurate and it does not suffer from roundoff errors in floating point arithmetics that limit the accuracy of other classical numerical approaches as e.g. finite difference approximation. Therefore, the CSDA can provide approximations extremely similar to analytical solutions when perturbation values are chosen close to machine precision. Implementation details of the robust numerical approximation of tangent moduli from stress calculations using the CSDA are given and their performance is illustrated through representative examples involving finite deformations. In addition to that, we focus on the determination of material instabilities. Therefore, an accompanying localization analysis is performed, where the acoustic tensor is directly computed from the approximation of the moduli. It is shown that classical numerical approximations are sensitive with respect to the perturbation value such that material instabilities may be artificially detected just as a result of slightly changing the perturbation. On the other hand, the CSDA approach provides high-accurate and robust approximations within a wide range of perturbation values such that the material instabilities can be detected precisely. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

The deformability and strength of lamellar two-phase (γ and α2) TiAl alloys strongly depends on the mechanical properties of the different interfaces in such microstructures. We carried out ab-initio density functional theory calculations of interface energy and strength for all known interface variants as well as the corresponding single crystal slip/cleavage planes to obtain a comprehensive database of key mechanical quantities. This data collection can be used for meso-scale simulations of deformation and fracture in TiAl. In spite of the different atomic configurations of the lamellar interfaces and the single crystal planes, the calculated values for the tensile strength are in the same range and can be considered as equal in a meso-scale model. Analysis of generalized stacking fault energy surfaces showed that the shear strength is directional dependent, however, the [112̄] direction is an invariant easy gliding direction in all investigated systems. The probability of different dislocation dissociation reactions as part of a shear deformation mechanism are discussed as well. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

We studied the texture and microstructure evolution in a plane strain compressed Cu-Ag metal matrix composite (MMC) with a heterophase microstructure using crystal plasticity finite element simulations. Lattice reorientations induced by both crystallographic (dislocation slip and twinning) and non-crystallographic (shear banding) mechanisms are addressed. First, simulations on a polycrystalline composite are made. Quite similar texture trends are observed for the composites and for the individual single-phase materials, namely, copper-type texture components in the Cu phase and brass-type texture components in the Ag phase. This result differs from experimental data that show less copper-type and more brass-type textures in both phases for the composite materials. To explore co-deformation mechanisms that lead to the specific crystallographic textures in the MMC, bicrystal simulations for the composite with specific initial orientation combinations are performed. The bicrystal simulations reproduce the experimentally observed trends of texture evolution in the respective phases of the composite, indicating that the localized stress and strain fields as well as the co-deformation mechanisms within the actual heterophase microstructure are well captured. The modeling shows that to accommodate plastic deformation between adjacent phases in the bicrystals, pronounced shear bands are triggered by stress concentration at the hetero-interfaces. With further deformation the bands penetrate through the phase boundaries and lead to larger lattice rotations. The simulations confirm that the shear banding behavior in heterophase composites is different from that in single-phase metals and the texture evolution in composite materials is strongly influenced by the starting texture, the local constraints exerted from the phase boundaries and the constitutive properties of the abutting phases. © 2014 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A novel type of duplex microstructure is generated in a single-phase austenitic steel (AISI 316L; X2CrNiMo19-12), consisting of plastically compliant recrystallized austenitic grains as the matrix containing coarse non-recrystallized grains with a nanotwinned austenitic (nt-γ) structure as strengthening inclusions. This novel type of single-phase yet duplex microstructured steel exhibits an excellent combination of strength and ductility. We study the plastic co-deformation mechanisms between the nanotwinned and the recrystallized grains under tension using electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). At tensile strains below 5%, the nt-γ grains nearly deform homogeneously in conjunction with the surrounding statically recrystallized (SRX) grains without generating notable strain localization near their interfaces. The anisotropic plastic deformation of the nt-γ grains with predominant shear parallel to the twin boundaries results in a higher dislocation density in the neighboring SRX grains. As the strain exceeds 12%, localized deformation occurs within the nt-γ grains in the form of shear banding. A strain gradient is developed in the surrounding SRX grains as a function of distance from the nt-γ/SRX interface. Deformation twinning is observed in the SRX grains near the nt-γ grains, while away from nt-γ grains dislocation slip dominates the deformation. The strengthening effect of the strong and ductile nt-γ grains may offer a novel approach to strengthen austenitic steels and related alloys by generating a nanotwinned/recrystallized duplex microstructure. © 2014 Acta Materialia Inc.

The mechanical properties of the ω-Al7Cu2Fe crystalline phase have been investigated over a large temperature range (650-1000 K). Despite of its antinomic structure with the icosahedral Al-Cu-Fe quasicrystalline phase, i.e. periodic vs non-periodic, its mechanical properties are very similar to those of the quasicrystalline phase, which strongly suggest similar deformation mechanisms. Consequently, as for the quasicrystalline structure, we propose that dislocation climb might control the plastic deformation of the ω-phase. However, in the present case, the specificities of the quasicrystalline structure cannot be invoked to justify the predominance of dislocation climb, which questions the role of quasiperiodicity on dislocation mobility. We suggest that this deformation mode certainly results from specific non-planar extensions of the dislocation core. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A key requirement of modern steels - the combination of high strength and high deformability - can best be achieved by enabling a local adaptation of the microstructure during deformation. A local hardening is most efficiently obtained by a modification of the stacking sequence of atomic layers, resulting in the formation of twins or martensite. Combining ab initio calculations with in situ transmission electron microscopy, we show that the ability of a material to incorporate such stacking faults depends on its overall chemical composition and, importantly, the local composition near the defect, which is controlled by nanodiffusion. Specifically, the role of carbon for the stacking fault energy in high-Mn steels is investigated. Consequences for the long-term mechanical properties and the characterisation of these materials are discussed. © 2014 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Deformation of ductile crystalline-amorphous nanolaminates is not well understood due to the complex interplay of interface mechanics, shear banding, and deformation-driven chemical mixing. Here we present indentation experiments on 10 nm nanocrystalline Cu-100 nm amorphous CuZr model multilayers to study these mechanisms down to the atomic scale. By using correlative atom probe tomography and transmission electron microscopy we find that crystallographic slip bands in the Cu layers coincide with noncrystallographic shear bands in the amorphous CuZr layers. Dislocations from the crystalline layers drag Cu atoms across the interface into the CuZr layers. Also, crystalline Cu blocks are sheared into the CuZr layers. In these sheared and thus Cu enriched zones the initially amorphous CuZr layer is rendered into an amorphous plus crystalline nanocomposite. © 2014 American Physical Society.

In soft, partially or fully saturated ground conditions, machine-driven tunnel construction causes short- and long-term ground deformations resulting from the disturbance of the virgin stress state of the soil and changes in the pore water conditions. These variations are, in turn, influenced by the heading face support, shield skin friction and by the gap grouting. Realistic large-scale 3D simulations are, therefore, increasingly required to investigate the interaction between machine-driven tunnel construction and the surrounding soil in order to provide reliable estimates of the expected settlements and associated risks of damage for existing structures, respectively, in particular in urban tunneling projects. If performed properly, these simulations involve complex interactions between individual components of the numerical model. The presented paper is concerned with recent advances in the process-oriented adaptive computational simulation of the excavation and steering processes in mechanized tunneling in soft soils using the finite element method. A novel automated adaptive mesh-refinement procedure is proposed to allow a refined resolution of the region of interest in the vicinity of the tunnel face during the TBM advancement. This procedure allows for an accurate assessment of the tunnel face stability and for the investigation of the immediate soil deformation and pore pressure changes around the tunnel. Furthermore, selected aspects of the numerical treatment - such as the stabilization of low order, two-phase, finite elements and the sub-stepping schemes inherent in the numerical integration of elasto-plastic models -,are also addressed in the presentation. © 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Cold welding, e.g. by cold forging, is a smart manufacturing technology, enabling novel multi material designs. A material combination, which is particularly attractive for manufacturing, though challenging to handle in a cold welding process, is steel and aluminum. We investigate the bond formation between cold forged C 15 (mainly primary heat treated) and AW 6082. Analysis starts with numerical simulations using the finite element analysis (FEA) to identify optimum conditions for bond formation. The bond strength was determined by tensile tests from samples eroded from the cold-welded specimen. Best performing samples showed a maximum tensile strength of ~200 MPa with ductile failure in the AW 6082. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) inspection of the bonded area between aluminum and steel show a reaction layer consisting of iron and aluminum of few nm thickness throughout the sample. The formation of such a reaction layer is hypothesized to be crucial for bond formation. © (2014) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland.

A model for high temperature creep of single crystal superalloys is developed, which includes constitutive laws for nonlocal damage and viscoplasticity. It is based on a variational formulation, employing potentials for free energy, and dissipation originating from plasticity and damage. Evolution equations for plastic strain and damage variables are derived from the well-established minimum principle for the dissipation potential. The model is capable of describing the different stages of creep in a unified way. Plastic deformation in superalloys incorporates the evolution of dislocation densities of the different phases present. It results in a time dependence of the creep rate in primary and secondary creep. Tertiary creep is taken into account by introducing local and nonlocal damage. Herein, the nonlocal one is included in order to model strain localization as well as to remove mesh dependence of finite element calculations. Numerical results and comparisons with experimental data of the single crystal superalloy LEK94 are shown. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

During the deformation of polycrystals, pronounced strain gradients may occur at grain boundaries between grains whose misorientations lead to a large mismatch in their deformation behaviour. Hence, even under globally uniaxial and homogeneous strains, internal stresses will arise that must be characterized by nonlocal plasticity models. In this work, such a nonlocal constitutive model is formulated based on the concept of densities of geometrically necessary superdislocations in an isotropic elastic-plastic medium. Since the deformation of individual grains is considered, crystal plasticity models are applied that take into account plastic slip on crystallographic planes. This new nonlocal constitutive model is applied to describe the deformation of a polycrystal under the influence of plastic strain gradients caused by isotropic and kinematic strain hardening. It is found that isotropic hardening originating from plastic strain gradients amplifies deformation heterogeneities stemming from different Schmid factors in neighbouring grains. However, the kinematic hardening resulting from plastic strain gradients tends to reduce such deformation heterogeneity. Thus, the capability of a polycrystal to deform uniformly is determined by the competition between isotropic and kinematic hardening. Finally, the model is applied to explain why grain refinement is an efficient way to improve material strength and ductility at the same time. © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

Ferritic-martensitic dual phase (DP) steels deform spatially in a highly heterogeneous manner, i.e. with strong strain and stress partitioning at the micro-scale. Such heterogeneity in local strain evolution leads in turn to a spatially heterogeneous damage distribution, and thus, plays an important role in the process of damage inheritance and fracture. To understand and improve DP steels, it is important to identify connections between the observed strain and damage heterogeneity and the underlying microstructural parameters, e.g. ferrite grain size, martensite distribution, martensite fraction, etc. In this work we pursue this aim by conducting in-situ deformation experiments on two different DP steel grades, employing two different microscopic-digital image correlation (μDIC) techniques to achieve microstructural strain maps of representative statistics and high-resolution. The resulting local strain maps are analyzed in connection to the observed damage incidents (identified by image post-processing) and to local stress maps (obtained from crystal plasticity (CP) simulations of the same microstructural area). The results reveal that plasticity is typically initiated within "hot zones" with larger ferritic grains and lower local martensite fraction. With increasing global deformation, damage incidents are most often observed in the boundary of such highly plastified zones. High-resolution μDIC and the corresponding CP simulations reveal the importance of martensite dispersion: zones with bulky martensite are more susceptible to macroscopic localization before the full strain hardening capacity of the material is consumed. Overall, the presented joint analysis establishes an integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) approach for designing advanced DP steels. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Here we present an approach to design a ferrite-based quadplex microstructure (ferrite/martensite/carbide/austenite) using a lean alloyed Mn-Si-Cr-Al ultrahigh carbon steel. The material has 1500MPa tensile strength and 11% elongation. The thermomechanical processing includes two main steps, namely, first, the formation of a ferrite plus carbide duplex microstructure by warm rolling below Ae1; and second, annealing just above Ae1 for a short time (~20min). The quadplex microstructure consists of 57vol% ultrafine ferrite (mean grain size ~1.5μm), 29vol% martensite, 12vol% spherical carbide and 2vol% austenite. Fracture analysis after tensile deformation reveals a mixed ductile and brittle failure mode without necking. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) and dilatometry tests were conducted to map the microstructure characteristics and the contribution of each phase to the overall deformation. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.

In geotechnical applications of artificial ground freezing, safe design and execution require a correct prediction of the coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical behavior of soils subjected to freezing. In the context of thermo-poro- plasticity (Coussy, 2005), a three-phase finite element model of freezing soils is presented: (1) considering solid particles, liquid water and crystal ice as separate phases; and (2) mixture temperature, liquid pressure, and solid displacement as primary field variables. Through three fundamental physical laws (overall entropy balance, mass balance of liquid water and crystal ice, and overall momentum balance) and corresponding state relations, the model captures the most relevant couplings between the phase transition, the liquid transport within the pores, and the accompanying mechanical deformation. Particularly for the description of the poro-plastic mechanical behavior of the soil model, the enhanced Barcelona Basic Model (Nishimura et al., 2009) is adopted within a unified effective-stress-based framework. The macroscopic strength criterion of the freezing soil composite is improved through multi-scale strength homogenization based upon the linear comparison composite method (Ortega et al. 2011). The performance of the proposed model is demonstrated by re-analysis of a soil freezing test and AGF processes during tunneling. © ASCE 2014.

The local deformation induced by vibratory cavitation erosion in a CuSnNi alloy was studied employing electron back-scattering diffraction and three-dimensional profiling. The study focused on evaluating initial plastic deformation corresponding to a group of 57 grains in order to correlate crystal orientation and local deformation morphologies. While detectable slip markings developed in grains oriented close to the 〈111〉 and 〈101〉 crystallographic directions during the incubation phase of the cavitation test, grains oriented close to 〈001〉 exhibited no visible slip markings and extensive formation of craters and hills. Furthermore, an analysis based on the average Schmid factors calculated for each grain satisfactorily reflects the transition for the mentioned deformation modes. The quantitative evaluation of the Schmid factor for all slip systems suggests a novel interpretation of the degradation phenomena observed in face-centered cubic materials exposed to a cavitating liquid. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.

Fe-based alloys are used extensively in many structural applications including under irradiation conditions in the nuclear industry. In this study, model Fe-Cr, Fe-Ni and Fe-Cr-Ni alloys that are the basis of many structural steels were synthesized as single crystals and characterized. The compositions investigated were Fe-15Cr, Fe-30Cr, Fe-30Ni and Fe-15Cr-15Ni (at%). Several key mechanical properties were determined which will be useful in further studies of irradiation/deformation-induced defects. Incipient plasticity and slip characteristics were investigated by nanoindentation on (001) and (1-10) surfaces, and hardness, modulus, pop-in behavior and theoretical strength were determined. The slip trace patterns after microindentation were imaged in a microscope. A novel slip trace analysis was developed and the underlying deformation mechanisms identified. The analysis shows that under both (001) and (1-10) indentations, the activated slip system for the BCC alloys is {112} for the FCC alloys the activated slip plane is {111}. These results were confirmed with finite element simulations using a slip-based crystal-plasticity model. Finally, the effects of heterogeneous pop-in mechanisms are discussed in the context of incipient plasticity in the four different alloys. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.

The proposal of configurational entropy maximization to produce massive solid-solution (SS)-strengthened, single-phase high-entropy alloy (HEA) systems has gained much scientific interest. Although most of this interest focuses on the basic role of configurational entropy in SS formability, setting future research directions also requires the overall property benefits of massive SS strengthening to be carefully investigated. To this end, taking the most promising CoCrFeMnNi HEA system as the starting point, we investigate SS formability, deformation mechanisms, and the achievable mechanical property ranges of different compositions and microstructural states. A comparative assessment of the results with respect to room temperature behavior of binary Fe-Mn alloys reveals only limited benefits of massive SS formation. Nevertheless, the results also clarify that the compositional requirements in this alloy system to stabilize the face-centered cubic (fcc) SS are sufficiently relaxed to allow considering nonequiatomic compositions and exploring improved strength–ductility combinations at reduced alloying costs. © 2014, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society.

The microstructure evolution of pure Mg and two Mg-rare-earth alloys (Mg-3 wt.% Dy and Mg-3 wt.% Er) was studied during in situ compression tests by electron backscatter diffraction and electron channelling contrast imaging. Strain localization and the formation of an early stage shear band ("pre-shear band") were observed in pure Mg during compressive deformation below 5% engineering strain. In the experiments percolative grain clusters with prevalent basal slip as a precursor for shear band formation was observed. This collective grain-cluster shear behaviour was analysed in more detail using crystal plasticity simulations, revealing a percolation of intense basal slip activity across grain boundaries as the mechanism for shear band initiation. Plane trace analysis, Schmid factor calculation and deformation transfer analysis at the grain boundaries were performed for the activated twins. It appears that many activated tension twins exhibit pronounced non-Schmid behaviour. Twinning appears to be a process of accommodating local strain rather than a response to macroscopic strain. © 2014 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Deformation of single stranded DNA in a translocation process before reaching the pore is investigated. By solving the Laplace equation in a suitable coordinate system and with appropriate boundary conditions, an approximate solution for the electric field inside and outside a narrow pore is obtained. With an analysis based on the "electrohydrodynamic equivalence" we determine the possibility of the extension of a charged polymer due to the presence of an electric field gradient in the vicinity of the pore entrance. With a multi-scale hybrid simulation (LB-MD), it is shown that an effective deformation before reaching the pore occurs, which facilitates the process of finding the entrance for the end monomers. We also highlight the role of long range hydrodynamic interactions via comparison of the LB-MD results with those obtained using a Langevin thermostat instead of the LB solver. © 2013 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

The activation of non-basal slip systems is of high importance for the ductility in hcp Mg and its alloys. In particular, for Mg–Y alloys where a higher activation of pyramidal dislocation slip causes an increased ductility detailed characterization of the activated slip systems is essential to understand and describe plasticity in these alloys. In this study a detailed analysis of the activated dislocations and slip systems via post-mortem TEM and SEM-EBSD based slip band analysis in 3% deformed Mg–3 wt% Y is presented. The analysis reveals a substantial activity of pyramidal dislocations with different Burgers vectors. The obtained dislocation densities and active slip systems are discussed with respect to atomistic simulations of non-basal dislocations in hcp Mg. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

A series of nanocrystalline Fe-C alloys with different carbon concentrations (xtot) up to 19.4 at.% (4.90 wt.%) are prepared by ball milling. The microstructures of these alloys are characterized by transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction, and partitioning of carbon between grain boundaries and grain interiors is determined by atom probe tomography. It is found that the segregation of carbon to grain boundaries of α-ferrite can significantly reduce its grain size to a few nanometers. When the grain boundaries of ferrite are saturated with carbon, a metastable thermodynamic equilibrium between the matrix and the grain boundaries is approached, inducing a decreasing grain size with increasing xtot. Eventually the size reaches a lower limit of about 6 nm in alloys with x tot > 6.19 at.% (1.40 wt.%); a further increase in xtot leads to the precipitation of carbon as Fe3C. The observed presence of an amorphous structure in 19.4 at.% C (4.90 wt.%) alloy is ascribed to a deformation-driven amorphization of Fe3C by severe plastic deformation. By measuring the temperature dependence of the grain size for an alloy with 1.77 at.% C additional evidence is provided for a metastable equilibrium reached in the nanocrystalline alloy. © 2013 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The construction of tunnels in soft ground causes short and long term ground deformations resulting from the disturbance of the virgin stress state of the soil and the changing pore water conditions. In particular in urban tunneling, in each stage of the construction process, interactions between the construction process, the soil and existing building infrastructure need to be evaluated to limit the risk of damage on existing buildings and to decide on appropriate mitigation measures. Besides conventional tunneling, mechanized tunneling is a well established and flexible technology in particular in urban areas, which allows for tunnel advances in a wide range of soils and difficult conditions. The paper presents a finite element model for the simulation of interactions between mechanized tunnel construction, the surrounding soil and existing buildings resting on pile foundations in the framework of a process-oriented simulation model for mechanized tunneling. The performance of the model is demonstrated by means of selected prototype analyses. As a consequence of the high computational demand connected with this type of spatio-temporal simulations, problem specific parallelization techniques are investigated to increase the numerical efficiency of the numerical analyses. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.

Different heats of the nickel-base Alloy 617B are tested under in-phase and out-of-phase thermo-mechanical fatigue (TMF) conditions at temperatures between 50 and 900 °C. During one of the TMF tests the growth of microcracks is observed using the replica technique. After the tests, some of the specimens are inspected by scanning electron microscopy in order to analyse the prevailing damage mechanisms compared with those observed in isothermal low-cycle fatigue (LCF) tests. In addition, a Chaboche-type model and a fracture-mechanics-based lifetime model are employed to describe the cyclic viscoplastic deformation and fatigue lifetime. The Chaboche model adjusted to isothermal data is found to reasonably predict the cyclic viscoplastic behaviour of thermo-mechanically loaded specimens. Lifetime data of TMF tests fall into a common scatter band with LCF tests at temperatures above 400 °C if the test results are analysed based on the introduced lifetime model.

Isothermal low cycle fatigue tests are carried out on the nickel-base Alloy 617B in the solution-annealed, stabilized and long-term aged conditions at temperatures between room temperature and 900 C. In addition, fatigue microcrack growth is measured using the replica technique. Transmission electron microscopy studies suggest that the observed differences in cyclic hardening between the different heat treatments result from the precipitation of fine carbides. Scanning electron microscope observations indicate a change in fracture mode for the solution-annealed and long-term aged material with temperature. The Chaboche model is able to describe the time and temperature dependent cyclic plasticity of the three material conditions. The measured lifetimes and crack growth rates can be described using a fracture mechanics based lifetime model. However, the data for room temperature and for temperatures above 400 C fall into two different scatter bands due to differences in crack growth rates. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

An equiatomic CoCrFeMnNi high-entropy alloy, which crystallizes in the face-centered cubic (fcc) crystal structure, was produced by arc melting and drop casting. The drop-cast ingots were homogenized, cold rolled and recrystallized to obtain single-phase microstructures with three different grain sizes in the range 4-160 μm. Quasi-static tensile tests at an engineering strain rate of 10-3 s-1 were then performed at temperatures between 77 and 1073 K. Yield strength, ultimate tensile strength and elongation to fracture all increased with decreasing temperature. During the initial stages of plasticity (up to ∼2% strain), deformation occurs by planar dislocation glide on the normal fcc slip system, {1 1 1}〈1 1 0〉, at all the temperatures and grain sizes investigated. Undissociated 1/2〈1 1 0〉 dislocations were observed, as were numerous stacking faults, which imply the dissociation of several of these dislocations into 1/6〈1 1 2〉 Shockley partials. At later stages (∼20% strain), nanoscale deformation twins were observed after interrupted tests at 77 K, but not in specimens tested at room temperature, where plasticity occurred exclusively by the aforementioned dislocations which organized into cells. Deformation twinning, by continually introducing new interfaces and decreasing the mean free path of dislocations during tensile testing ("dynamic Hall-Petch"), produces a high degree of work hardening and a significant increase in the ultimate tensile strength. This increased work hardening prevents the early onset of necking instability and is a reason for the enhanced ductility observed at 77 K. A second reason is that twinning can provide an additional deformation mode to accommodate plasticity. However, twinning cannot explain the increase in yield strength with decreasing temperature in our high-entropy alloy since it was not observed in the early stages of plastic deformation. Since strong temperature dependencies of yield strength are also seen in binary fcc solid solution alloys, it may be an inherent solute effect, which needs further study. © 2013 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

We develop a framework for a variational analysis of microstructural evolution during inelastic high-temperature deformation accommodated by dislocation mechanisms and diffusive mass transport. A polycrystalline aggregate is represented by a distribution function characterizing the state of individual grains by three variables, dislocation density, grain size, and elastic strain. The aggregate's free energy comprises elastic energy and energies of lattice distortions due to dislocations and grain boundaries. The work performed by the external loading is consumed by changes in the number of defects and their migration leading to inelastic deformation. The variational approach minimizes the rate of change of free energy with the evolution of the state variables under constraints on the aggregate volume, on a relation between changes in plastic strain and dislocation density, and on the form of the dissipation functionals for defect processes. The constrained minimization results in four basic evolution equations, one each for the evolution in grain size and dislocation density and flow laws for dislocation and diffusion creep. Analytical steady state scaling relations between stress and dislocation density and grain size (piezometers) are derived for quasi-homogeneous materials characterized by a unique relation between grain size and dislocation density. Our model matches all currently available experimental observations regarding high-temperature deformation of olivine aggregates with plausible values for the involved micromechanical model parameters. The relation between strain rate and stress for olivine aggregates maintaining a steady state microstructure is distinctly nonlinear in stark contrast to the majority of geodynamical modeling relying on linear relations, i.e., Newtonian behavior. Key Points Analytical derivation of steady-state piezometers using variational analysis Matches observations for olivine rocks with plausible micromechanical parameters Provides insight into rheology of olivine aggregates, e.g., lifetime of grains ©2013. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.

A multi-scale investigation of twin bundles in Fe-22Mn-0.6C (wt%) twinning-induced plasticity steel after tensile deformation has been carried out by truly correlative means; using electron channelling contrast imaging combined with electron backscatter diffraction, high-resolution secondary ion mass spectrometry, scanning transmission electron microscopy, and atom probe tomography on the exact same region of interest in the sample. It was revealed that there was no significant segregation of Mn or C to the twin boundary interfaces. Copyright © 2013 Microscopy Society of America.

The high-temperature and low-stress creep (1293 K, 160 MPa) of the single-crystal Ni-based superalloy LEK 94 is investigated, comparing the tensile creep behavior of miniature creep specimens in [0 0 1] and [1 1 0] directions. In the early stages of creep, the [0 0 1]-direction loading shows higher minimum creep rates, because a greater number of microscopic crystallographic slip systems are activated, the dislocation networks at γ/γ′ interfaces accommodate lattice misfit better, and γ channels are wider. After the creep rate minimum, creep rates increase more strongly as a function of strain for [1 1 0] tensile loading. This may be related to the nature of rafting during [1 1 0] tensile creep, which results in a more open topology of the γ channels. It may also be related to more frequent γ′ cutting events compared with [1 0 0] tensile creep. © 2013 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The nature of nanocrystalline materials determines that their deformation at the grain level relies on the orientation of individual grains. In this work, we investigate the anisotropic response of nanotwinned Cu to frictional contacts during nanoscratching by means of molecular dynamics simulations. Nanotwinned Cu samples containing embedded twin boundaries parallel, inclined and perpendicular to scratching surfaces are adopted to address the effects of crystallographic orientation and inclination angle of aligned twin boundaries cutting the scratching surface. The transition in deformation mechanisms, the evolution of friction coefficients and the friction-induced microstructural changes are analyzed in detail and are related to the loading conditions and the twinned microstructures of the materials. Furthermore, the effect of twin spacing on the frictional behavior of Cu samples is studied. Our simulation results show that the crystallographic orientation strongly influences the frictional response in different ways for samples with different twin spacing, because the dominant deformation mode varies upon scratching regions of different orientations. A critical inclination angle of 26.6° gives the lowest yield strength and the highest friction coefficient, at which the plasticity is dominated by twin boundary migration and detwinning. It is demonstrated that the anisotropic frictional response of nanotwinned Cu originates from the heterogeneous localized deformation, which is strongly influenced by crystallographic orientation, twin boundary orientation and loading condition. © 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd.

We investigated the hydrogen embrittlement of a Fe-18Mn-1.2%C (wt.%) twinning-induced plasticity steel, focusing on the influence of deformation twins on hydrogen-assisted cracking. A tensile test under ongoing hydrogen charging was performed at low strain rate (1.7 × 10-6 s -1) to observe hydrogen-assisted cracking and crack propagation. Hydrogen-stimulated cracks and deformation twins were observed by electron channeling contrast imaging. We made the surprising observation that hydrogen-assisted cracking was initiated both at grain boundaries and also at deformation twins. Also, crack propagation occurred along both types of interfaces. Deformation twins were shown to assist intergranular cracking and crack propagation. The stress concentration at the tip of the deformation twins is suggested to play an important role in the hydrogen embrittlement of the Fe-Mn-C twining-induced plasticity steel. © 2013 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This study reveals the extraordinary effect of an individual twin boundary (TB) on the mechanical behaviors of Cu bicrystals with a TB parallel to the loading axis whose primary slip vectors are always parallel to the TB plane. With direct experimental evidence, it is shown that there is no strengthening effect of the TB on the bicrystal under microcompression, and the TB is intrinsically strong enough to resist fatigue cracking with the slip bands becoming the preferential cracking sites finally. © 2013 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

We study the microbanding mechanism in an Fe-22Mn-0.6C (wt.%) twinning-induced plasticity steel. Dislocation substructures were examined by electron channeling contrast imaging and electron backscatter diffraction. We observe a pronounced effect of the strain path on microbanding, which is explained in terms of Schmid's law. Microbands created under shear loading have a non-crystallographic character. This is attributed to the microbanding mechanism and its relation with the dislocation substructure. Further insights into the dislocation configuration of microbands are provided.© 2013 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Incipient plasticity in Mg single crystals was investigated using the pop-ins generated during spherical nanoindentation on (0 0 0 1), (1 0 -1 2) and (1 0 -1 0) surfaces. Representative deformed regions extracted from underneath indents by means of focused ion beam machining were examined by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to identify the deformation mechanisms. Anisotropic elastic Hertzian contact theory was used to calculate indentation Schmid factors and the relevant resolved shear stresses at pop-in from the load-displacement curves. The pop-in statistics in conjunction with the TEM analysis showed that the most likely deformation mechanism responsible for pop-in is slip via 〈a〉 dislocations even in the case of indentation along the c-axis. © 2013 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Via computer simulations, we provide evidence that the shear rate induced red blood cell tumbling-to-tank-treading transition also occurs at quite high volume fractions, where collective effects are important. The transition takes place as the ratio of effective suspension stress to the characteristic cell membrane stress exceeds a certain value and does not explicitly depend on volume fraction or cell deformability. This value coincides with that for a transition from an orientationally less ordered to a highly ordered phase. The average cell deformation does not show any signature of transition, but rather follows a simple scaling law independent of volume fraction. © 2013 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

The crystallographic dependence of the mechanical responses of an α-Ti-7 wt.% Al alloy was measured by nanoindentation using spherical and Berkovich indenters. Both elastic moduli and hardness responses of indents on the (0 0 0 1), (1̄100) and (1̄21̄0) planes were quantified. The dislocation structures resulting from indentation were characterized by electron microscopy. While scanning electron microscopy techniques were used for the observation of surface slip structures, site-specific focused-ion-beam thin foil preparation and scanning transmission electron microscopy techniques were employed for the imaging of sub-surface dislocation structures. Elastic modulus, hardness and load at pop-in were found to vary with crystallographic orientation. Indentation-induced plasticity was found to occur by multiple slip/twin mechanisms and to be dependent on crystal orientation, although 〈a〉 slip on (0 0 0 1) planes was found to be common to all orientations. The observed dislocation structures are rationalized on the basis of theoretical predictions based on the anisotropic elastic contact analysis and resolved shear stress calculations. © 2013 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Artificial ground freezing (AGF) is a commonly used technique in geotechnical engineering for ground improvement such as ground water control and temporary excavation support during tunnel construction in soft soils. The main potential problem connected with this technique is that it may produce heave and settlement at the ground surface, which may cause damage to the surface infrastructure. Additionally, the freezing process and the energy needed to obtain a stable frozen ground may be significantly influenced by seepage flow. Evidently, safe design and execution of AGF require a reliable prediction of the coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical behavior of freezing soils. With the theory of poromechanics, a three-phase finite element soil model is proposed, considering solid particles, liquid water, and crystal ice as separate phases and mixture temperature, liquid pressure, and solid displacement as the primary field variables. In addition to the volume expansion of water transforming into ice, the contribution of the micro-cryo-suction mechanism to the frost heave phenomenon is described in the model using the theory of premelting dynamics. Through fundamental physical laws and corresponding state relations, the model captures various couplings among the phase transition, the liquid transport within the pore space, and the accompanying mechanical deformation. The verification and validation of the model are accomplished by means of selected analyses. An application example is related to AGF during tunnel excavation, investigating the influence of seepage flow on the freezing process and the time required to establish a closed supporting frozen arch. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Experimental study of temperature- and frequency-dependent properties of the commercially available shape memory polymer Tecoflex™ EG 72D (TFX) (Lubrizol, USA) using dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) technique is presented. Temperature scan DMA tests have been carried out in three distinct deformation modes, uniaxial tension, three-point bending, and simple torsion, using two different testing rigs at different test parameters (frequency, strain amplitude, and heating rate) in temperatures ranging from below to above the glass transition temperature. The influence of different test parameters and some discrepancies in the temperature-dependent storage and loss moduli (and hence the loss factor) measured by DMA in different deformation modes are discussed. Shape memory polymer Tecoflex™ is experimentally investigated by running DMA tests in three distinct deformation modes, uniaxial tension, three-point bending, and simple torsion, using two test rigs, Eplexor 500N of Gabo Qualimeter® and Modular Compact Rheometer MCR-301 of Anton Paar. It is observed that the temperature-dependent storage and loss moduli measured in different deformation modes show certain discrepancies that cannot be easily reconciled. Copyright © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

We present a multiscale dislocation density-based constitutive model for the strain-hardening behavior in twinning-induced plasticity (TWIP) steels. The approach is a physics-based strain rate- and temperature-sensitive model which reflects microstructural investigations of twins and dislocation structures in TWIP steels. One distinct advantage of the approach is that the model parameters, some of which are derived by ab initio predictions, are physics-based and known within an order of magnitude. This allows more complex microstructural information to be included in the model without losing the ability to identify reasonable initial values and bounds for all parameters. Dislocation cells, grain size and twin volume fraction evolution are included. Particular attention is placed on the mechanism by which new deformation twins are nucleated, and a new formulation for the critical twinning stress is presented. Various temperatures were included in the parameter optimization process. Dissipative heating is also considered. The use of physically justified parameters enables the identification of a universal parameter set for the example of an Fe-22Mn-0.6C TWIP steel. © 2012 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The coupling of electron channeling contrast imaging (ECCI) with electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) provides an efficient and fast approach to perform ECCI of crystal defects, such as dislocations, cells, and stacking faults, under controlled diffraction conditions with enhanced contrast. From a technical point of view, the ECCI technique complements two of the main electron microscopy techniques, namely, EBSD and conventional diffraction-based transmission electron microscopy. In this review, we provide several application examples of the EBSD-based ECCI approach on microstructure characterization, namely, characterization of single dislocations, measurement of dislocation densities, and characterization of dislocation substructures in deformed bulk materials. We make use of a two-beam Bloch wave approach to interpret the channeling contrast associated with crystal defects. The approach captures the main features observed in the experimental contrast associated with stacking faults and dislocations. © 2013 TMS.

The co-deformation and shear localization in heterophase alloys is studied using two-dimensional crystal plasticity finite element simulations on plane strain compressed Cu-Ag and Cu-Nb metal matrix composites. The aim is to study the fundamentals of micromechanics, co-deformation and shear banding in materials with heterophase interfaces. It is observed that, depending on the initial orientations of the crystals, co-deformation of the constituent heterophases often proceeds via collective mechanisms, i.e. by pronounced shear banding triggered by stress concentration at the interfaces. This phenomenon leads to highly localized strains within the bands, exceeding the average strain in part by two orders of magnitude. Shear band development is related to the inherent mechanical properties of each crystal and also to the properties of the abutting crystals. The predicted topology and nature of the cross-phase shear bands, i.e. the extreme local strains, significant bending of the interface regions, and sharp strain localization that propagates across the interfaces, agree well with experimental observations in cold-rolled composites. The simulations reveal that cross-phase shear banding leads to large and highly localized values of stress and strain at heterophase interfaces. Such information is essential for a better understanding of the micromechanical boundary conditions inside co-deformed composites and the associated shear-induced chemical mixing. © 2013 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Particle-stimulated nucleation (PSN) is investigated in Nb-containing ferritic stainless steel. Coarse-grained sheets were cold rolled to 80 pct thickness reduction and annealed from 973 K to 998 K (700 C to 725 C) to obtain partially recrystallized microstructures. Electron backscatter diffraction was performed around coarse niobium carbonitride particles (larger than 1 μm) within coarse grains (~1 mm), with different host orientations in both deformed and annealed states. In the deformed state, the deformation zones around both spherical and rectangular particles were investigated. The local lattice rotations about the transverse direction necessary to accommodate the particle-matrix strain incompatibility were observed in all grains investigated. After annealing, recrystallization occurs preferentially around coarse particles at the initial stages of recrystallization. Based on a total number of 130 grains nucleated via PSN, we observe both, randomly oriented and minor {111}110 oriented texture components. The results also reveal that PSN in this material is not associated with a specific host orientation. © 2012 The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society and ASM International.

The solution of a continuum mechanical boundary value problem requires a constitutive response that connects deformation and stress at each material point. Such connection can be regarded as three separate hierarchical problems. At the top-most level, partitioning of the (mean) boundary values of the material point among its microstructural constituents and the associated homogenization of their response is required, provided there is more than one constituent present. Second, based on an elastoplastic decomposition of (finite strain) deformation, these responses follow from explicit or implicit time integration of the plastic deformation rate per constituent. Third, to establish the latter, a state variable-based constitutive law needs to be interrogated and its state updated. The D̈üsseldorf Advanced MAterial Simulation Kit (DAMASK) reflects this hierarchy as it is built in a strictly modular way. This modular structure makes it easy to add additional constitutive models as well as homogenization schemes. Moreover it interfaces with a number of FE solvers as well as a spectral solver using an FFT. We demonstrate the versatility of such a modular framework by considering three scenarios: Selective refinement of the constitutive material description within a single geometry, component-scale forming simulations comparing different homogenization schemes, and comparison of representative volume element simulations based on the FEM and the spectral solver. © 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Crystal plasticity caused by the nucleation and interaction of dislocations is an important aspect in crystal deformation. Recent nanoindentation experiments in single crystals of copper or aluminum revealed large deviations in the lattice rotation and an inhomogeneous distribution of the dislocation density in the plastic zone under the indenter tip. Molecular dynamics simulations offer the possibility to study the origin of these phenomena on an atomistic scale, but require sophisticated analysis routines in order to deal with the massive amount of generated data. Here a new efficient approach to analyze atomistic data on the fly during the simulation is introduced. This approach allows us to identify the dislocation network including Burgers vectors on the timescale of picoseconds and below. This data does not only reveal the evolution of dislocation structures, but it offers the possibility to quantify local dislocation density tensors calculated on an atomic level. The numerical results are compared with experimental data from the literature. The presented approach provides useful insight into the active deformation mechanisms during plastic deformation that will help us to bridge simulations on atomic scales and continuum descriptions. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

We investigate the kinetics of the deformation structure evolution and its contribution to the strain hardening of a Fe-30.5Mn-2.1Al-1.2C (wt.%) steel during tensile deformation by means of transmission electron microscopy and electron channeling contrast imaging combined with electron backscatter diffraction. The alloy exhibits a superior combination of strength and ductility (ultimate tensile strength of 1.6 GPa and elongation to failure of 55%) due to the multiple-stage strain hardening. We explain this behavior in terms of dislocation substructure refinement and subsequent activation of deformation twinning. The early hardening stage is fully determined by the size of the dislocation substructure, namely, Taylor lattices, cell blocks and dislocation cells. The high carbon content in solid solution has a pronounced effect on the evolving dislocation substructure. We attribute this effect to the reduction of the dislocation cross-slip frequency by solute carbon. With increasing applied stress, the cross-slip frequency increases. This results in a gradual transition from planar (Taylor lattices) to wavy (cells, cell blocks) dislocation configurations. The size of such dislocation substructures scales inversely with the applied resolved stress. We do not observe the so-called microband-induced plasticity effect. In the present case, due to texture effects, microbanding is not favored during tensile deformation and, hence, has no effect on strain hardening. © 2012 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Many engineering challenges occur on multiple interacting length scales, e.g. during fracture atoms separate on the atomic scale while plasticity develops on the micrometer scale. To investigate the details of these events, a concurrent multiscale model is required which studies the problem at appropriate length- and time-scales: the atomistic scale and the dislocation dynamics scale. The AtoDis multiscale model is introduced, which combines atomistics and dislocation dynamicsinto a fully dynamic model that is able to simulate deformation mechanisms at finite temperature. The model uses point forces to ensure mechanical equilibrium and kinematic continuity at the interface. By resolving each interface atom analytically, and not numerically, the framework uses a coarse FEM mesh and intrinsically filters out atomistic vibrations. This multiscale model allows bi-directional dislocation transition at the interface of both models with no remnant atomic disorder. Thereby, the model is able to simulate a larger plastic zone than conventional molecular dynamics while reducing the need for constitutive dislocation dynamics equations. This contribution studies dislocation nucleation at finite temperature and investigates the absorption of dislocations into the crack wake. © 2012 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, July 29 – August 2, 2012. © 2012, Microscopy Society of America. All rights reserved.

There is growing evidence that the flow of driven amorphous solids is not homogeneous, even if the macroscopic stress is constant across the system. Via event-driven molecular dynamics simulations of a hard sphere glass, we provide the first direct evidence for a correlation between the fluctuations of the local volume fraction and the fluctuations of the local shear rate. Higher shear rates do preferentially occur at regions of lower density and vice versa. The temporal behavior of fluctuations is governed by a characteristic time scale, which, when measured in units of strain, is independent of shear rate in the investigated range. Interestingly, the correlation volume is also roughly constant for the same range of shear rates. A possible connection between these two observations is discussed. © 2012 American Physical Society.

Hydrogen embrittlement was observed in an Fe-18Mn-1.2C (wt.%) steel. The tensile ductility was drastically reduced by hydrogen charging during tensile testing. The fracture mode was mainly intergranular fracture, though transgranular fracture was also partially observed. The transgranular fracture occurred parallel to the primary and secondary deformation twin boundaries, as confirmed by electron backscattering diffraction analysis and orientation-optimized electron channeling contrast imaging. The microstructural observations indicate that cracks are initiated at grain boundaries and twin boundaries. © 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Mechanisms leading to initiation of crazing type failure in a glassy polymer are not clearly understood. This is mainly due to the difficulty in characterizing the stress state and polymer configuration sufficiently locally at the craze initiation site. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we have now been able to access this information and have shown that the local heterogeneous deformation leads to craze initiation in glassy polymers. We found that zones of high plastic activity are constrained by their neighborhood and become unstable, initiating crazing from these sites. Furthermore, based on the constant flow stresses observed in the unstable zones, we conclude that microcavitation is the essential local deformation mode to trigger crazing in glassy polymers. Our results demonstrate the basic difference in the local deformation mode as well as the conditions that lead to either shear-yielding or crazing type failures in glassy polymers. We anticipate our paper to help in devising a new criterion for craze initiation that not only considers the stress state, but also considers local deformation heterogeneities that form the necessary condition for crazing in glassy polymers. © 2012 American Physical Society.

We studied local deformation and temperature effects associated with mechanical twinning in Fe-3 wt.% Si at room temperature. During tensile testing, two large stress drops occurred. They were accompanied by local strain and temperature bursts, which we mapped via simultaneous displacement and temperature field characterization. To identify the microstructural origin of these phenomena, we performed high resolution electron backscatter scanning diffraction and electron channeling contrast imaging measurements. The microstructure at the positions where strong adiabatic heating occurred was characterized by the formation of primary twins and high dislocation activity within a range of about 10 μm around the twin-matrix interface. We suggest that the local temperature and strain jumps result from the formation and dissipative motion of lattice dislocations that accommodate twinning. © 2012 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In this paper it is demonstrated how nanoindentation can be used to assess the subsurface damage induced by nanomachining. To accomplish this, a characteristic difference in the nanoindentation response between plastically deformed and undeformed material is exploited. Classical molecular dynamics simulations are performed to investigate the elementary mechanisms of the irreversible plastic processes that occur during nanomachining of a copper single crystal. To mimic the experimental characterization of subsurface damage, we perform nanoindentation simulations into the machined surface. The results show that the critical contact pressure required for dislocation nucleation, i.e. the pop-in load, decreases continuously with increasing machining depth, while the indentation hardness seems widely unaffected by prior nanomachining. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Seven stable austenitic steels (stable with respect to γ → α′ transformation at room temperature) of different alloy compositions (18Cr-12.5Ni, 18Cr-35Ni, 18Cr-8Ni-6Mn-0.25N, 0.6C-23Mn, 1.3C-12Mn, 1C-31Mn-9Al, 18Cr-19Mn-0.8N) were tensile tested in high-pressure hydrogen atmosphere to assess the role of austenite stability on hydrogen environment embrittlement (HEE). The influence of hydrogen on tensile ductility was small in steels that are believed to have a high initial portion of dislocation cross slip (18Cr-12.5Ni, 18Cr-35Ni, 18Cr-8Ni-6Mn-0.25N), while the effects of hydrogen were significantly greater in steels with other primary deformation modes (planar slip in 18Cr-19Mn-0.8N and 1C-31Mn-9Al or mechanical twinning in 0.6C-23Mn and 1.3C-12Mn) despite comparable austenite stability at the given test conditions. It appears that initial deformation mode is one important parameter controlling susceptibility to HEE and that martensitic transformation is not a sufficient explanation for HEE of austenitic steels. Copyright © 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The stacking fault energy (SFE) is an intrinsic property of metals and is involved in the deformation mechanism of different kind of steels, such as TWIP (twinning induced plasticity), TRIP (transformation induced plasticity), HNS (high nitrogen), and high strength steels. The dependence of the SFE on the content of interstitial elements (C, N) is not yet fully understood, and different tendencies have been found by different authors. In order to study the influence of the interstitial elements on the SFE, experimental measurements extracted from literature were collected and analyzed to predict the individual and combined effect of carbon and nitrogen in different systems. The referenced austenitic steels are Fe-22Mn-C, Fe-30Ni-C, Fe-15Cr-17Mn-N, Fe-18Cr-16Ni-10Mn-N, Fe-18Cr-9Mn-C-N, Fe-18Mn-18Cr-C-N and Fe-(20-30)Mn-12Cr-C-N. The calculation of the SFE is based on the Gibbs free energy of the austenite to ε-martensite transformation (ΔG γ→ε), which is calculated by means of the Calphad method. The revision of the measured values reveals that on different ranges of interstitial contents the SFE behaves differently. At lower values (C, N or C+N up to 0.4%), a local minimum or maximum is found in most of the systems. At higher concentration levels, a proportional dependence seems to occur. These observations agree with the theory of the dependence of SFE on the free electron concentration. Alloying with Mn or Ni has a strong influence on the electronic configuration and magnetic properties of the austenite and therefore on the SFE. The results of this study provide valuable information for materials design, especially in the context of alloying with C, N or C+N. © 2012 Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland.

New developed (20-30)Mn12Cr(0.56-0.7)CN TWIP steels developed from thermodynamic calculations exhibit great mechanical properties, such as high strength (1800MPa UTS), deformability (80-100% elongation), toughness (300 J ISO-V), and impact wear resistance equivalent to that of Hadfield steel. In addition, they exhibit corrosion resistance by passivation in aqueous acidic media. Microstructure examination by SEM and EBSD at different degrees of deformation reveals that twinning takes place and is responsible for the high cold-work hardening of the steels. Stacking fault energy measurement of three different developed steels locates them in the range of 30-40mJm -2, being highly dependent on the N and Mn contents. Measurements carried out with digital image correlation indicate that at room temperature dynamic strain aging or Portevin-LeChatelier effect takes place. Measurements of impact toughness indicate that the steels have ductile to brittle transition at cryogenic temperatures as a consequence of the effect of nitrogen on the deformation mechanisms, resulting in a quasi-cleavage fracture along the {111} planes at -196°C. New Fe-Cr-Mn-C-N TWIP steels developed from thermodynamic calculations exhibit great mechanical properties, such as high strength (1800MPa UTS), deformability (80-100% elongation), toughness (300J ISO-V), high impact wear resistance, and corrosion resistance by passivation in aqueous acidic media. This work examines the microstructure, stacking fault energy, and dynamic strain aging to understand the tensile behavior and toughness of these materials. Copyright © 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

2-D cellular automaton model was developed to simulate the dynamic strain-induced transformation (DSIT) from austenite (?) to ferrite (a) and the post-dynamic kinetic behavior in a low carbon steel with the purpose of developing a methodology of mesoscopic computer simulation for an improved understanding of the formation of ultra-fine ferrite (UFF) in DSIT and the conservation of this microstructure during the post-deformation period. The predicted microstructure obtained after DSIT was compared with a quenched dual-phase steel. Its microstructure, consisting of fine-grained ferrite and fine islands of retained austenite dispersed in the matrix, were found to be in good agreement with the predictions. The simulated results indicate that the refinement of ferrite grains produced via DSIT can be interpreted in terms of unsaturated nucleation and limited growth mechanisms. It is also revealed that continuing transformation from retained austenite to ferrite and the reverse transformation both could take place simultaneously during the post-deformation isothermal holding. A competition between them exists at the early stage of the post-dynamic transformation. © 2012 Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland.

High temperature compression deformation studies of Ti-6Al-2Zr-1Mo-1V titanium alloy in full β phase region with different strains/strain rates and then with subsequent varied cooling rates were performed to understand the microstructure evolution. Crystal orientation information and microstructure morphology of all tested samples were investigated by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) measurements. The crystal orientations of prior high temperature β grains were estimated by reconstructing the retained β phase at room temperature. The theoretical crystal orientations of all possible α variants within an investigated prior β grain were calculated according to the Burgers orientation relationship (OR) between parent and product phase. The calculated and experimental results were then compared and analyzed. The influences of deformation strain, strain rate and cooling rate on the Burgers OR between prior β matrix and precipitated α phase were investigated. Full discussions have been conducted by combination of crystal plasticity finite element method (CP-FEM) grain-scale simulation results. The results indicate that external factors (such as deformation strain, strain rate and cooling rate) have a slight influence on the obeying of Burgers OR rule during β → α phase transformation. However, strain rate and cooling rate have a significant effect on the morphology of precipitated α phase. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.

The evolution of defects in Mo alloy nanofibers with initial dislocation densities ranging from 0 to ∼1.6 × 10 14 m -2 were studied using an in situ "push-to-pull" device in conjunction with a nanoindenter in a transmission electron microscope. Digital image correlation was used to determine stress and strain in local areas of deformation. When they had no initial dislocations the Mo alloy nanofibers suffered sudden catastrophic elongation following elastic deformation to ultrahigh stresses. At the other extreme fibers with a high dislocation density underwent sustained homogeneous deformation after yielding at much lower stresses. Between these two extremes nanofibers with intermediate dislocation densities demonstrated a clear exhaustion hardening behavior, where the progressive exhaustion of dislocations and dislocation sources increases the stress required to drive plasticity. This is consistent with the idea that mechanical size effects ("smaller is stronger") are due to the fact that nanostructures usually have fewer defects that can operate at lower stresses. By monitoring the evolution of stress locally we find that exhaustion hardening causes the stress in the nanofibers to surpass the critical stress predicted for self-multiplication, supporting a plasticity mechanism that has been hypothesized to account for the rapid strain softening observed in nanoscale bcc materials at high stresses. © 2012 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The stress-induced B2-B19′ transformation in aged 51 at.% NiTi was investigated using in situ straining transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Increased applied strain along [1 1 0] B2 transforms B2 into plates containing B19′ variants that are related by a (1 1 0) B2 compound twin plane. This atypical twin plane is explained by relaxing the invariant plane constraint in the crystallographic theory of martensite (CTM) to an invariant line constraint. The relaxation is rationalized from the thin foil geometry. The relaxed CTM approach, coupled with conditions to maximize transformation strain along the loading axis and minimize elastic energy, predicts the observed twin interface, diffraction patterns, and interface with the B2 austenite. These results demonstrate subtleties in interpreting thin foil TEM results regarding martensitic transformations, and translating those results to bulk response. © 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

We study the dislocation and twin substructures in a high manganese twinning-induced-plasticity steel (TWIP) by means of electron channeling contrast imaging. At low strain (true strain below 0.1) the dislocation substructure shows strong orientation dependence. It consists of dislocation cells and planar dislocation arrangements. This dislocation substructure is replaced by a complex dislocation/twin substructure at high strain (true strain of 0.3-0.4). The twin substructure also shows strong orientation dependence. We identify three types of dislocation/twin substructures. Two of these substructures, those which are highly favorable or unfavorable oriented for twinning, exhibit a Schmid behavior. The other twin substructure does not fulfill Schmid's law. © (2012) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland.

We have measured the average dislocation density by electron channeling contrast imaging (ECCI) in a scanning electron microscope under controlled diffraction conditions in a Fe-3 wt.% Si alloy tensile deformed to a macroscopic stress of 500 MPa. Under optimal diffraction conditions, ECCI provides an average dislocation density close to that obtained by bright-field transmission electron microscopy. This result confirms that ECCI is a powerful technique for determining dislocation densities in deformed bulk metals. © 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

We present crystal plasticity finite element simulations of the texture evolution in α-brass polycrystals under plane strain compression. The novelty is a non-crystallographic shear band mechanism [Anand L, Su C. J Mech Phys Solids 2005;53:1362] that is incorporated into the constitutive model in addition to dislocation and twinning. Non-crystallographic deformation associated with shear banding leads to weaker copper and S texture components and to a stronger brass texture compared to simulations enabling slip and twinning only. The lattice rotation rates are reduced when shear banding occurs. This effect leads to a weaker copper component. Also, the initiation of shear banding promotes brass-type components. In summary the occurrence of non-crystallographic deformation through shear bands shifts face-centered-cubic deformation textures from the copper type to the brass type. © 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

NiTi shape memory alloys can be used as micro actuators and small scale pseudoelastic components. Therefore there is a need to characterize their mechanical properties on the micro scale. In several previous studies, such tests (nanoindentation, pillar compression) were performed for different NiTi alloys. However, no consistent results concerning the coupling between plastic deformation and martensitic transformation were obtained. Moreover it is unclear whether the material's response to loading on the micro scale reflects its large scale mechanical anisotropy. In this study, we investigate a binary, solution annealed precipitate free NiTi alloy and compress small pillars in <0. 0. 1>-, <1. 0. 1>- and <1. 1. 1>-directions. Mechanical results are analyzed in the light of SEM and post-mortem TEM investigations. We identify deformation mechanisms and show that there is deformation anisotropy. We show that micro pillar testing yields results which are in good qualitative agreement with previous work from macroscopic investigations. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.

Deformation microstructures of bulk ultrafine-grained austenitic AISI 304L stainless steels were analyzed by electron backscatter diffraction. Samples with grain sizes below 500 nm showed transition from grain-scale deformation to the collective phenomenon of shear banding. This was assisted by strain-induced grain rotation and coalescence. This phenomenon was suppressed in samples with a bimodal grain size distribution (maxima at ∼650 and ∼1400 nm) due to deformation-induced martensite formation, yielding high tensile strength and ductility (1348 MPa ultimate tensile strength at 0.36 max. true strain). © 2012 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The underlying mechanisms that are responsible for the improved room-temperature ductility in Mg-Y alloys compared to pure Mg are investigated by transmission electron microscopy and density functional theory. Both methods show a significant decrease in the intrinsic stacking fault I 1 energy (I 1 SFE) with the addition of Y. The influence of the SFE on the relative activation of different competing deformation mechanisms (basal, prismatic, pyramidal slip) is discussed. From this analysis we suggest a key mechanism which explains the transition from primary basal slip in hexagonal close-packed Mg to basal plus pyramidal slip in solid solution Mg-Y alloys. This mechanism is characterized by enhanced nucleation of 〈c + a〉 dislocations where the intrinsic stacking fault I 1 (ISF 1) acts as heterogeneous source for 〈c + a〉 dislocations. Possible electronic and geometric reasons for the modification of the SFE by substitutional Y atoms are identified and discussed. © 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The study of mechanical properties in micron- and submicron-sized metal crystals raises fundamental questions about the influence of size on different aspects of plasticity. In situ characterization of the microstructure evolution during loading is necessary to understand the physics underlying crystal deformation. In situ μLaue diffraction is able to provide unique statistical information on the evolution of type and density of stored dislocations. Here we show macroscopically expected and unexpected plastic behavior at low strains, observed during in situ μLaue tensile tests on micron-sized, single slip oriented Cu samples. Regardless of the initial behavior, a steady state is reached which qualifies a technical yield criterion at the micron scale. © 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Two plain carbon steels with varying manganese content (0.87 wt pct and 1.63 wt pct) were refined to approximately 1 μm by large strain warm deformation and subsequently subjected to intercritical annealing to produce an ultrafine grained ferrite/martensite dual-phase steel. The influence of the Mn content on microstructure evolution is studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The Mn distribution in ferrite and martensite is analyzed by high-resolution electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) combined with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). The experimental findings are supported by the calculated phase diagrams, equilibrium phase compositions, and the estimated diffusion distances using Thermo-Calc (Thermo-Calc Software, McMurray, PA) and Dictra (Thermo-Calc Software). Mn substantially enhances the grain size stability during intercritical annealing and the ability of austenite to undergo martensitic phase transformation. The first observation is explained in terms of the alteration of the phase transformation temperatures and the grain boundary mobility, while the second is a result of the Mn enrichment in cementite during large strain warm deformation, which is inherited by the newly formed austenite and increases its hardenability. The latter is the main reason why the ultrafine-grained material exhibits a hardenability that is comparable with the hardenability of the coarse-grained reference material. © 2011 The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society and ASM International.

We investigate the influence of grain size on the strain hardening of two Fe-22Mn-0.6C (wt.%) twinning-induced plasticity steels with average grain sizes of 3 and 50 μm, respectively. The grain size has a significant influence on the strain hardening through the underlying microstructure. The dislocation substructure formed in the early deformation stages determines the density of nucleation sites for twins per unit grain boundary area which controls the developing twin substructure. © 2012 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A creep test rig is described which allows to perform creep experiments with miniature tensile creep specimens under an inert gas atmosphere at temperatures up to 1150°C. Previous work on the development of a miniature tensile creep test procedure is described. The key elements of the new inert gas system are then described. The test rig yields reliable creep data. Three examples for applications of the new system addressing grain boundary sliding in a TiAl alloy, creep cavitation and damage accumulation in copper and to provide high temperature creep data for a Co-Re-Cr alloy are given. © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Ultrafine-grained (UFG) materials processed by severe plastic deformation are known to exhibit good mechanical properties. Much about the annealing behavior of such materials is still unknown, and this work aims to provide a better understanding of the thermal properties of UFG materials. For this purpose a Cu-0.17 wt%Zr alloy was subjected to high pressure torsion (HPT) with a maximal pressure of 4.8GPa at room temperature. The microstructures of the specimens were characterized using electron back scatter (EBSD) measurements, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and hardness measurements. During annealing of the samples, dispersoids were formed which improved the thermal stability of the alloy. At higher strain levels the fraction of high angle grain boundaries (HAGBs) increased above 70% of the total grain boundaries. Ultrafine-grained materials processed by severe plastic deformation are known to exhibit good mechanical properties. Much about the annealing behavior of such materials is still unknown, and this work aims to provide a better understanding of the thermal properties of such materials. For this purpose a Cu-0.17 wt%Zr alloy was subjected to high pressure torsion. The microstructures of the specimens were characterized in the deformed state as well as after annealing using EBSD and hardness measurements. Copyright © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

SUS316L austenitic stainless steel was subjected to severe plastic deformation (SPD) by the method of high pressure torsion (HPT). From a fully austenitic matrix (γ), HPT resulted in phase transformation from γ→α'. The largest volume fraction of 70% α' was obtained at 0.2 revolutions per minute (rpm) while was limited to 3% at 5rpm. Pre-straining of g by HPT at 5rpm decreases the volume fraction of α' obtained by HPT at 0.2rpm. By HPT at 5rpm, α'→γ reverse transformation was observed for α' produced by HPT at 0.2rpm. © (2011) Trans Tech Publications.

We have applied an accurate molecular mechanics force field, parametrized with respect to first-principles calculated reference data, for copper paddle wheel (Cu2(O2C)4) based metal organic frameworks to investigate possible systems with a 3,4-connected network topology. The results explain why the well-known HKUST-1 forms a tbo net, whereas for an extended linker, as in MOF-14, the pto topology is preferred. In particular, the complex structure of the latter system, consisting of two deformed and "interwoven" nets, is accurately predicted, and the necessary deformation energy can be quantified. In this context also all possible forms of interpenetration were considered. Finally, by designing a bromine-substituted extended linker the system can be forced back into the more open tbo topology. This first molecular mechanics investigation of the relative strain energies of MOF network topologies demonstrates that the structure is to a large extent defined by the intrinsic conformational preferences of the building blocks. Our approach allows to analyze and understand the reasons for this preference and can be used as a computational tool for the design of specific topologies. © 2011 American Chemical Society.

Severe plastic deformation (SPD) processes, are successfully employed to produce ultra fine grain (UFG) and nanocrystalline (NC) microstructures in Ni50.7Ti49.3 shape memory alloy. The effect of grain size on phase transformations during annealing is investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The results of comparative studies of phase transformations in coarse-grained, UFG and NC alloys after SPD and subsequent long-term (up to 100 hours) annealing at 400°C is presented. The functional properties and the innovation potential of UFG NiTi alloys is considered and discussed.

A statistical model for pop in initiated at preexisting dislocations during nanoindentation is developed to explain size-dependent pop-in stresses. To verify theoretical predictions of this model, experiments were performed on single-crystal Mo, utilizing indenter radii that vary by over 3 orders of magnitude. The stress where plastic deformation begins ranges from the theoretical strength in small volumes, to 1 order of magnitude lower in larger volumes. An intermediate regime shows wide variability in the stress to initiate plastic deformation. Our theory accurately reproduces the experimental cumulative probability distributions, and predicts a scaling behavior that matches experimental behavior. © 2011 American Physical Society.

For reducing the porosity of single crystal (SX) nickel-based superalloys, Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) is used. High pressures of about 100-170 MPa lead to local deformation, which close the pores. However, since HIP also requires high temperatures (1000-12007deg;C) it has a pronounced effect on the microstructure and the local distribution of elements. This contribution analyses the effect of different HIP treatments on both the microstructure and the segregation of the SX superalloy LEK94 in the as-precipitation-hardened state. In addition, the effects of rapid or slow cooling are analyzed. To distinguish the effect of pressure from those of temperature, the HIPed samples are compared with specimens annealed at atmospheric pressure. © (2011) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland.

The deformation of an initially spherical capsule, freely suspended in simple shear flow, can be computed analytically in the limit of small deformations [D. Barths-Biesel, J.M. Rallison, The time-dependent deformation of a capsule freely suspended in a linear shear flow, J. Fluid Mech. 113 (1981) 251267]. Those analytic approximations are used to study the influence of the mesh tessellation method, the spatial resolution, and the discrete delta function of the immersed boundary method on the numerical results obtained by a coupled immersed boundary lattice Boltzmann finite element method. For the description of the capsule membrane, a finite element method and the Skalak constitutive model [R. Skalak, A. Tozeren, R.P. Zarda, S. Chien, Strain energy function of red blood cell membranes, Biophys. J. 13 (1973) 245264] have been employed. Our primary goal is the investigation of the presented model for small resolutions to provide a sound basis for efficient but accurate simulations of multiple deformable particles immersed in a fluid. We come to the conclusion that details of the membrane mesh, as tessellation method and resolution, play only a minor role. The hydrodynamic resolution, i.e., the width of the discrete delta function, can significantly influence the accuracy of the simulations. The discretization of the delta function introduces an artificial length scale, which effectively changes the radius and the deformability of the capsule. We discuss possibilities of reducing the computing time of simulations of deformable objects immersed in a fluid while maintaining high accuracy. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The plastic deformation of lamellar microstructures composed of the two phases γ-TiAl and α2-Ti3Al is highly orientation dependent. In this paper we present a homogenized model that takes into account the micromechanical effect of the plate-like morphologies that are often observed in two-phase titanium aluminide alloys. The model is based on crystal elasto-viscoplasticity and 18 deformation systems were implemented that have been identified to govern the plastic flow of the lamellar microstructures. The model is validated against experiments on polysynthetically twinned (PST) crystals and shows good agreement with the data. On a larger length scale, the model is applied to a 64-grain aggregate to investigate the mechanical response of two different kinds of microstructures. Different magnitudes of the kinematic constraints exerted by the densely spaced and highly aligned interfaces are shown to affect the macroscopic flow behavior of the microstructures. The phenomenon of pronounced microplasticity of fully lamellar material as well as the stress variation inside two-phase microstructures are studied quantitatively. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In this paper a new micro-shear experiment is introduced using a double shear specimen machined by a focused ion beam technique. The micro-shear specimen is structured from pure copper promoting (111) [101] slip. Comparing scanning electron microscopy images before and after deformation provides evidence for localized shear. Load-displacement data identify a load plateau and characterize the localized shear process (critical shear-stress for activation of (111) [101] slip: 170 MPa). Copyright © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

Finite element formulations for arbitrary hyperelastic strain energy functions that are characterized by a locking-free behavior for incompressible materials, a good bending performance and accurate solutions for coarse meshes need still attention. Therefore, the main goal of this contribution is to provide an improved mixed finite element for quasi-incompressible finite elasticity. Based on the knowledge that the minors of the deformation gradient play a major role for the transformation of infinitesimal line-, area- and volume elements, as well as in the formulation of polyconvex strain energy functions a mixed finite element with different interpolation orders of the terms related to the minors is developed. Due to the formulation it is possible to condensate the mixed element formulation at element level to a pure displacement form. Examples show the performance and robustness of the element. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.

The biomechanics of the optic nerve head is assumed to play an important role in ganglion cell loss in glaucoma. Organized collagen fibrils form complex networks that introduce strong anisotropic and nonlinear attributes into the constitutive response of the peripapillary sclera (PPS) and lamina cribrosa (LC) dominating the biomechanics of the optic nerve head. The recently presented computational remodeling approach (Grytz and Meschke in Biomech Model Mechanobiol 9:225-235, 2010) was used to predict the micro-architecture in the LC and PPS, and to investigate its impact on intraocular pressure-related deformations. The mechanical properties of the LC and PPS were derived from a microstructure-oriented constitutive model that included the stretch-dependent stiffening and the statistically distributed orientations of the collagen fibrils. Biomechanically induced adaptation of the local micro-architecture was captured by allowing collagen fibrils to be reoriented in response to the intraocular pressure-related loading conditions. In agreement with experimental observations, the remodeling algorithm predicted the existence of an annulus of fibrils around the scleral canal in the PPS, and a predominant radial orientation of fibrils in the periphery of the LC. The peripapillary annulus significantly reduced the intraocular pressure-related expansion of the scleral canal and shielded the LC from high tensile stresses. The radial oriented fibrils in the LC periphery reinforced the LC against transversal shear stresses and reduced LC bending deformations. The numerical approach presents a novel and reasonable biomechanical explanation of the spatial orientation of fibrillar collagen in the optic nerve head. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.

Al-matrix material composites are produced from pure Al and 40vol.% Ti3AlC2 powders using hot isostatic pressing technique. It is demonstrated that the nanocrystallized-Ti3AlC2 agglomerates, uniformly distributed in the Al matrix, form a hard continuous skeleton. The mechanical properties of the composites are evaluated over the temperature range of 20-500°C by performing compression tests at constant strain rate. The monotonic temperature dependence of the proof stress at 0.2% plastic strain suggests that the same thermally activated mechanism controls the composite plastic deformation over the entire temperature range. The yield stress of the composite, about twice as high as that of the Al matrix in the investigated temperature range proves that Ti3AlC2 particles constitute efficient reinforcement particles for Al matrix. SEM observations indicate that plastic deformation of 40Ti3AlC2/60Al composite takes place in the Al matrix while Ti3AlC2 particle agglomerates undergo substantial fracture. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.

Two-dimensional dislocation dynamics and diffusion kinetics simulations are employed to study the different mechanisms of plastic deformation of ultrafine-grained (UFG) metals at different temperatures. Besides conventional plastic deformation by dislocation glide within the grains, we also consider grain boundary (GB)-mediated deformation and recovery mechanisms based on the absorption of dislocations into GBs. The material is modeled as an elastic continuum that contains a defect microstructure consisting of a pre-existing dislocation population, dislocation sources and GBs. The mechanical response of the material to an external load is calculated with this model over a wide range of temperatures. We find that at low homologous temperatures, the model material behaves in agreement with the classical Hall-Petch law. At high homologous temperatures, however, a pronounced GB softening and, moreover, a high strain-rate sensitivity of the model material is found. Qualitatively, these numerical results agree well with experimental results known from the literature. Thus, we conclude that dynamic recovery processes at GBs and GB diffusion are the rate-limiting processes during plastic deformation of UFG metals. © 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

To enable plastic deformation during nanoindentation of an initially defect-free crystal, it is necessary first to produce dislocations. While it is now widely accepted that the nucleation of the first dislocations occurs at the start of the pop-in event frequently observed in experiments, it is unclear how these initial dislocations multiply during the early stages of plastic deformation and produce pop-in displacements that are typically much larger than the magnitude of the Burgers vector. This uncertainty about the complex interplay between dislocation multiplication and strain hardening during nanoindentation makes a direct correlation between force-displacement curves and macroscopic material properties difficult. In this paper, we study the early phase of plastic deformation during nanoindentation with the help of large-scale molecular dynamics simulations. A skeletonization method to simplify defect structures in atomistic simulations enables the direct observation and quantitative analysis of dislocation nucleation and multiplication processes occurring in the bulk as well as at the surface. © 2010 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Pearlitic steel can exhibit tensile strengths higher than 5 GPa after severe plastic deformation, where the deformation promotes a refinement of the lamellar structure and cementite decomposition. However, a convincing correlation between deformation and cementite decomposition in pearlite is still absent. In the present work, a local electrode atom probe was used to characterize the microstructural evolution of pearlitic steel, cold-drawn with progressive strains up to 5.4. Transmission electron microscopy was also employed to perform complementary analyses of the microstructure. Both methods yielded consistent results. The overall carbon content in the detected volumes as well as the carbon concentrations in ferrite and cementite were measured by atom probe. In addition, the thickness of the cementite filaments was determined. In ferrite, we found a correlation of carbon concentration with the strain, and in cementite, we found a correlation of carbon concentration with the lamella thickness. Direct evidence for the formation of cell/subgrain boundaries in ferrite and segregation of carbon atoms at these defects was found. Based on these findings, the mechanisms of cementite decomposition are discussed in terms of carbon-dislocation interaction. © 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Pure Cu was subjected to severe plastic predeformation by p=1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 24 passes of equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) on route BC at ambient temperature and subsequently tested in uniaxial compression parallel to the extrusion direction at constant rate or constant stress and temperatures from ambient temperature up to 418K. The maximum compressive strength of the ECAPed Cu varies in a systematic fashion with p, until a steady state is finally reached between p=8 and 16 where the rate sensitivity of flow stress is maximal. The results are quantitatively interpreted in terms of the boundary structure, considering the superposition of hardening due to refinement of low-angle boundaries and softening due to enhanced thermal recovery at high-angle boundaries. Beyond the maximum the compressive strength declines with strain for relatively low rate and/or elevated temperature of compression. This is explained by dynamic grain coarsening towards the new steady state developing in compression. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.

Titanium aluminides are the most promising intermetallics for use in aerospace and automotive applications. Consequently, it is of fundamental interest to explore the deformation mechanisms occurring in this class of materials. One model material which is extensively used for such studies are polysynthetically twinned (PST) TiAl crystals, which consist predominantly of parallel γ-TiAl and, fewer, α2-Ti3Al lamellae. In the present study, PST TiAl crystals with a nominal composition of Ti-50 at.% Al were machined by means of the focused ion beam (FIB) technique into miniaturized compression samples with a square cross-section of approximately 9 μm × 9 μm. Compression tests on the miniaturized samples were performed in situ inside a scanning electron microscope using a microindenter equipped with a diamond flat punch. After deformation, thin foils were cut from the micro-compression samples and thinned to electron transparency using a FIB machine in order to study the deformation structure by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The TEM studies reveal mechanical twinning as the main deformation mechanism at strains of 5.4%, while at strains of 8.3% dislocation glide becomes increasingly important. The experimentally observed twins scale in size with the width of the γ-TiAl lamella. A kinematic and thermodynamic model is developed to describe the twin-related length change of the micro-compression sample at small strains as well as the relationship of an increase of twin width with increasing γ-TiAl lamella thickness. The developed twin model predicts a width of the twins in the range of a few nanometers, which is in agreement with experimental findings. © 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Three ferrite/martensite dual-phase steels varying in the ferrite grain size (12.4, 2.4 and 1.2 μm) but with the same martensite content (∼30 vol.%) were produced by large-strain warm deformation at different deformation temperatures, followed by intercritical annealing. Their mechanical properties were compared, and the response of the ultrafine-grained steel (1.2 μm) to aging at 170 °C was investigated. The deformation and fracture mechanisms were studied based on microstructure observations using scanning electron microscopy and electron backscatter diffraction. Grain refinement leads to an increase in both yield strength and tensile strength, whereas uniform elongation and total elongation are less affected. This can be partly explained by the increase in the initial strain-hardening rate. Moreover, the stress/strain partitioning characteristics between ferrite and martensite change due to grain refinement, leading to enhanced martensite plasticity and better interface cohesion. Grain refinement further promotes ductile fracture mechanisms, which is a result of the improved fracture toughness of martensite. The aging treatment leads to a strong increase in yield strength and improves the uniform and total elongation. These effects are attributed to dislocation locking due to the formation of Cottrell atmospheres and relaxation of internal stresses, as well as to the reduction in the interstitial carbon content in ferrite and tempering effects in martensite. © 2010 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Analysis of the electron energy loss near edge structure (ELNES) provides an experimental tool to probe the density of unoccupied states. Here we present a first principles study on the projected density of states (PDOS) of AlN, GaN, and AlxGa1-xN alloys in order to investigate the impact of strain on the N K-edge ELNES. Uni-axial and bi-axial strain, volume conserving, and bi-axial stress deformation modes are calculated for the whole compositional range from AlN to GaN. Our results show that only the strain along the c-axis has a pronounced impact on the PDOS. Furthermore, we find that bi-axial stress in the basal plane, which is present in pseudomorphic polar heteroepitaxial layers, does not significantly influence the N K-edge spectra. However, strain-induced changes may appear for different deformation modes and/or specimen geometries.

The formation of intermetallic reaction layers and their influence on mechanical properties was investigated in friction stir welded joints between a low C steel and both pure Al (99.5wt.%) and Al-5wt.% Si. Characterisation of the steel/Al interface, tensile tests and fractography analysis were performed on samples in the as-welded state and after annealing in the range of 200-600°C for 9-64min. Annealing was performed to obtain reaction layers of distinct thickness and composition. For both Al alloys, the reaction layers grew with parabolic kinetics with the η phase (Al5Fe2) as the dominant component after annealing at 450°C and above. In joints with pure Al, the tensile strength is governed by the formation of Kirkendall-porosity at the reaction layer/Al interface. The tensile strength of joints with Al-5wt.% Si is controlled by the thickness of the η phase (Al5Fe2) layer. The pre-deformation of the base materials, induced by the friction stir welding procedure, was found to have a pronounced effect on the composition and growth kinetics of the reaction layers. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.

Synchrotron X-ray microdiffraction was used to characterize the deformation structure of single crystalline Cu micro-tensile specimens which were oriented for single slip. The 3-m thick samples were strained in situ in a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Electron microscopy observations revealed glide steps at the surface indicating single slip. While the slip steps at the surface must have formed by the predominant activation of the primary glide system, analysis of Laue peak streaking directions revealed that, even at low strains, dislocations had been activated and stored on an unpredicted slip system. Furthermore, the Laue scans showed that multiple slip takes over at a later state of deformation. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Tensile straining of a cross-sectional Al/polyimide was performed in a transmission electron microscope. The tensile deformation of Al was accomplished mainly by dislocations emitted from the film surface, which glide and impinge on the Al/polyimide interface. During further straining the interfacial dislocations disappeared, indicating dislocation core spreading, whereas threading dislocations moved towards the film surface. While the Al/polyimide interface remains flat and becomes depleted of dislocations, the Al surface becomes increasingly rough accompanied by a noticeable increase in dislocation density. © 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

μLaue diffraction sheds light onto the deformation behavior of miniaturized samples. Here we present a new instrumental setup for the in situ deformation of micron sized specimens at BM32 of the ESRF synchrotron source. Furthermore, a compression test of a 7 μm sized single slip oriented copper pillar is presented, showing the activation of an unpredicted slip system due to misalignment and the formation of several sub-grains. The results of the compressed pillar as well as possibilities and crucial points for measuring and data evaluation are discussed. Copyright © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

We study the kinetics of the substructure evolution and its correspondence to the strain hardening evolution of an Fe-22 wt.% Mn-0.6 wt.% C TWIP steel during tensile deformation by means of electron channeling contrast imaging (ECCI) combined with electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). The contribution of twin and dislocation substructures to strain hardening is evaluated in terms of a dislocation mean free path approach involving several microstructure parameters, such as the characteristic average twin spacing and the dislocation substructure size. The analysis reveals that at the early stages of deformation (strain below 0.1 true strain) the dislocation substructure provides a high strain hardening rate with hardening coefficients of about G/40 (G is the shear modulus). At intermediate strains (below 0.3 true strain), the dislocation mean free path refinement due to deformation twinning results in a high strain rate with a hardening coefficient of about G/30. Finally, at high strains (above 0.4 true strain), the limited further refinement of the dislocation and twin substructures reduces the capability for trapping more dislocations inside the microstructure and, hence, the strain hardening decreases. Grains forming dislocation cells develop a self-organized and dynamically refined dislocation cell structure which follows the similitude principle but with a smaller similitude constant than that found in medium to high stacking fault energy alloys. We attribute this difference to the influence of the stacking fault energy on the mechanism of cell formation. © 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In the present study, we investigate the fatigue behavior of Nickel Titanium (NiTi) microstents at 22°C (room temperature) and 37°C up to 30×10 6 load cycles. We briefly describe our test procedure, which applies displacement-controlled pull-pull fatigue cycling between displacements corresponding to apparent strains of 5 and 7.5%. The response of the microstents to mechanical loading indicates cyclic softening during 30×10 4 cycles. Subsequently, the maximum load remains constant throughout the remainder of the test. We use transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to clarify the microstructural reasons for cyclic softening. A focused ion beam (FIB) technique is used to take out thin foil specimens from critical microstent locations. Our TEM results show that the dislocation density increases during cycling. We also find that microstructural regions with stabilized stress-induced B19 martensite can be detected. © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Adequate consideration of the various interactions between the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) and the surrounding underground is a pre-requisite for reliable prognoses in shield supported tunneling based upon numerical analysis. In addition to face support and the grouting of the annular gap the contact conditions along the shield skin between the moving TBM and the surrounding, deforming soil constitute the most relevant component of TBM-soil interactions in mechanized tunneling. This paper is concerned with the analysis of the interface conditions between the shield skin and the soil and its adequate numerical representation in the context of a process-oriented numerical simulation model for mechanized tunneling. The situation around the shield skin is influenced by the design of the Tunnel Boring Machine, the deformational behavior of the surrounding underground and by a possible inflow of process liquids into the steering gap. A novel simulation method is proposed which allows to model the viscous flow of the process liquids into the steering gap and its interactions with the face support, the tail void grouting, the deforming soil and the moving TBM. The proposed numerical model for the TBM-soil interaction is part of a recently developed three-dimensional, process-oriented finite element model for shield tunneling (Nagel et al., 2010). It allows to investigate the effects of the inflow of process liquids into the steering gap during TBM advance considering realistic machine-related and geological conditions. It is, in particular, capable to compute the pressure distribution within the developing liquid film in association with the face support and grouting conditions and to predict its influence on the surface settlements and the overall TBM-soil interaction affecting, e.g. the hydraulic jack forces or shield deformations. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.

Atom Probe Tomography (APT) was used to analyze the carbon distribution in a heavily cold drawn pearlitic steel wire with a true strain of 6.02. The carbon concentrations in cementite and ferrite were separately measured by a sub-volume method and compared with the literature data. It is found that the carbon concentration in ferrite saturates with strain. The carbon concentration in cementite decreases with the lamellar thickness, while the carbon atoms segregate at dislocations or cell/grain boundaries in ferrite. The mechanism of cementite decomposition is discussed in terms of the evolution of dislocation structure during severe plastic deformation. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.

In the present work, the processing parameters which govern the evolution of microstructure during rotary swaging and intermediate/subsequent heat treatments in copper rods were studied. Copper ingots with an initial diameter of 40 mm were reduced to a final diameter of 11.7 mm by rotary swaging. Processing sequences were applied with different intermediate anneals and various final heat treatments. The resulting microstructures were characterized using orientation imaging microscopy, optical microscopy and hardness measurements. Special emphasis was placed on the evolution of microstructure with respect to the radial and longitudinal position in the rod. Most importantly, microstructural evidence for torsional loading during swaging was found, and a spiral grain morphology was observed. Moreover, localized deformation events were identified and evidence for abnormal grain growth was found. Finally, a combination of swaging and heat treatment parameters was identified which allowed a homogeneous grain structure to be produced. © Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG.

The formation of deformation-induced shear bands plays an important role for the room temperature deformation of both, Mg and Mg-Y alloys, but the formation and structure of shear bands is distinctively different in the two materials. Due to limited deformation modes in pure Mg, the strain is localized in few shear bands leading to an early failure of the material during cold deformation. Contrarily, Mg-RE (RE: rare earth) alloys exhibit a high density of homogeneously distributed local shear bands during deformation at room temperature. A study of the microstructure of the shear bands by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) at different strains was performed. These investigations give insight into the formation of shear bands and their effects on the mechanical behaviour of pure Mg and Mg-3Y. Since in pure Mg mainly extension twinning and basal dislocation slip are active, high stress fields at grain resp. twin boundaries in shear bands effect fast growth of the shear bands. In Mg-RE alloys additionally contraction and secondary twinning and pyramidal dislocation slip are active leading to the formation of microscopic shear bands which are limited to the boundary between two grains. The effects of shear bands on the mechanical behaviour of pure Mg and Mg-RE alloys are discussed with respect to their formation and growth. © (2011) Trans Tech Publications.

The analysis and simulation of microstructures in solids has gained crucial importance, virtue of the influence of all microstructural characteristics on a material's macroscopic, mechanical behavior. In particular, the arrangement of dislocations and other lattice defects to particular structures and patterns on the microscale as well as the resultant inhomogeneous distribution of localized strain results in a highly altered stress-strain response. Energetic models predicting the mechanical properties are commonly based on thermodynamic variational principles. Modeling the material response in finite strain crystal plasticity very often results in a non-convex variational problem so that the minimizing deformation fields are no longer continuous but exhibit small-scale fluctuations related to probability distributions of deformation gradients to be calculated via energy relaxation. This results in fine structures that can be interpreted as the observed microstructures. In this paper, we first review the underlying variational principles for inelastic materials. We then propose an analytical partial relaxation of a Neo-Hookean energy formulation, based on the assumption of a first-order laminate microstructure, thus approximating the relaxed energy by an upper bound of the rank-one-convex hull. The semi-relaxed energy can be employed to investigate elasto-plastic models with a single as well as multiple active slip systems. Based on the minimization of a Lagrange functional (consisting of the sum of energy rate and dissipation potential), we outline an incremental strategy to model the time-continuous evolution of the laminate microstructure, then present a numerical scheme by means of which the microstructure development can be computed, and show numerical results for particular examples in single- and double-slip plasticity. We discuss the influence of hardening and of slip system orientations in the present model. In contrast to many approaches before, we do not minimize a condensed energy functional. Instead, we incrementally solve the evolution equations at each time step and account for the actual microstructural changes during each time step. Results indicate a reduction in energy when compared to those theories based on a condensed energy functional. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.

In this work, the indentation size effect and pop-in behavior are studied for indentations in undeformed and locally pre-deformed CaF2 single crystals, using both nanoindentation experiments and molecular dynamics simulations. To study the influence of dislocation density on the indentation behavior, small-scale indentations are carried out inside the plastic zone of larger indentations. This experiment is mimicked in the simulations by indenting a small sphere into the center of the residual impression of a larger sphere. The undeformed material shows the well-known pop-in behavior followed by the indentation size effect. Pre-deforming the material leads to a reduction in the indentation size effect both for experiments and simulations, which is in accordance with the Nix-Gao theory. Furthermore, the pop-in load is reduced in the experiments, whereas a smooth transition from elastic to plastic deformation is found in the simulations. There, plasticity is initiated by the movement of pre-existing dislocation loops in the vicinity of the plastic zone. The simulations thus give a detailed insight into the deformation mechanism during indentation and highlight the importance of the dislocation microstructure for the indentation size effect and dislocation nucleation. © 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Aiming for an integrated approach to computational materials engineering in an industrial context poses big challenges in the development of suitable materials descriptions for the different steps along the processing chain. The first key component is to correctly describe the microstructural changes during the thermal and mechanical processing of the base material into a semi-finished product. Explicit representations of the microstructure are most suitable there. The final processing steps and particularly component assessment then has to describe the entire component which requires homogenized continuum mechanical representations. A key challenge is the step in between, the determination of the (macroscopic) materials descriptions from microscopic structures. This article describes methods to include microstructure into descriptions of the deformation of metal, and demonstrates the central steps of the simulation along the processing chain of an automotive component manufactured from a dual phase steel. © 2011 TMS.

Our ability to monitor volcanoes (using seismic signals, ground deformation, gas fluxes, or other ground and satellite based observations) as well as our understanding of melt reservoirs that feed eruptions have evolved tremendously in recent years. The complex plumbing systems that are thought to feed eruptions are, however, difficult to relate to the monitoring signals. Here we show that the record preserved in compositional zoning of erupted minerals may be used to reconstruct sections of the plumbing system. Kinetic modeling of such zoning can yield information on the residence time of magma in different segments of the plumbing systems. This allows a more nuanced evaluation of the link between observed monitoring signals or eruption styles and the magmatic processes and movement of batches of melts at depth. The approach is illustrated through a study of the compositional zoning recorded in olivine crystals from the 1991-1993 SE-flank eruption products of Mt. Etna (Sicily). The zoning patterns in crystals reveal that the plumbing system of the volcano consisted of at least three different magmatic environments between which magma was transported and mixed in the year or two preceding the start of eruption. Quantification of this history indicates that two main pathways of melt migration and three timescales dominated the dynamics of the system. Combination of this information with the timing of observation of various monitoring signals allows a reconstruction of the dynamic evolution of this section of the plumbing system during the early stages of the 1991-1993 eruption. It is seen, for example, how the migration of melt through the same sections of the plumbing system can cause pre-eruptive triggering, enhance Strombolian activity, and through the ensuing eruption cleanse and flush the plumbing system. Different kinds of mixing occur simultaneously at different sections of the plumbing system on different timescales (a few days up to two years). © 2011 Elsevier B.V.

We report on the microstructure, texture and deformation mechanisms of a novel ductile lean duplex stainless steel (Fe-19.9Cr-0.42Ni-0.16N-4.79Mn-0.11C- 0.46Cu-0.35Si, wt.%). The austenite is stabilized by Mn, C, and N (instead of Ni). The microstructure is characterized by electron channeling contrast imaging (ECCI) for dislocation mapping and electron backscattering diffraction (EBSD) for texture and phase mapping. The material has 1 GPa ultimate tensile strength and an elongation to fracture of above 60%. The mechanical behavior is interpreted in terms of the strength of both the starting phases, austenite and ferrite, and the amount, dispersion, and transformation kinetics of the mechanically induced martensite (TRIP effect). Transformation proceeds from austenite to hexagonal martensite to near cubic martensite (γ → → α′). The -martensite forms in the austenite with an orientation relationship close to Shoji-Nishiyama. The α′-martensite nucleates at the intersections of deformation bands, especially -bands, with Kurdjumov-Sachs and Nishiyama-Wassermann relationships. The ferrite deforms by dislocation slip and contains cell substructures. © 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In brittle composite materials, failure mechanisms like debonding of the matrix-fiber interface or fiber breakage can result in crack deflection and hence in the improvement of the damage tolerance. More generally it is known that high values of fracture energy dissipation lead to toughening of the material. Our aim is to investigate the influence of material parameters and geometrical aspects of fibers on the fracture energy as well as the crack growth for given load scenarios. Concerning simulations of crack growth the cohesive element method in combination with the Discontinuous Galerkin method provides a framework to model the fracture considering strength, stiffness and failure energy in an integrated manner. Cohesive parameters are directly determined by DFT supercell calculations. We perform studies with prescribed crack paths as well as free crack path simulations. In both cases computational results reveal that fracture energy depends on both the material parameters but also the geometry of the fibers. In particular it is shown that the dissipated energy can be increased by appropriate choices of cohesive parameters of the interface and geometrical aspects of the fiber. In conclusion, our results can help to guide the manufacturing process of materials with a high fracture toughness. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Using molecular-dynamics simulation we simulate nanoindentation into the three principal surfaces-the (100), (110), and (111) surface-of Cu and Al. In the elastic regime, the simulation data agree fairly well with the linear elastic theory of indentation into an elastically anisotropic substrate. With increasing indentation depth, the effect of pressure hardening becomes visible. When the critical stress for dislocation nucleation is reached, even the elastically isotropic Al shows a strong dependence of the force-displacement curves on the surface orientation. After the load drop, when plasticity has set in, the influence of the surface orientation is lost, and the contact pressure (hardness) becomes independent of the surface orientation. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.

The microstructure and texture evolution of dual-phase steel sheets with a cold reduction of about 50%, annealed at ferritic and intercritical temperatures, were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy and electron backscatter diffraction. The competition between recrystallization and phase transformation was of particular interest. The sheets were annealed in salt bath or were annealed in a MULTIPAS annealing simulator under variation of annealing temperature, annealing time, and heating rate. For low intercritical temperatures, recrystallization occurred before phase transformation. The sheets showed a similar through-thickness texture inhomogeneity with a plane-strain texture with strong α-fiber and weak γ-fiber as cold rolled sheets and a ferritic-martensitic band structure in the sheet center layers. An inverse correlation between the volume fractions of recrystallized ferrite and martensite was observed. This interdependence is attributed to a different phase transformation kinetics for recyrstallized and deformed ferrite and is discussed in terms of deformation strain energy, diffusion, and number of nucleation sites. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.

Single crystals of γ-TiAl cannot be grown in the near-stoichiometric compositions that are present inside two-phase γ / α2-microstructures with attractive mechanical properties. Therefore, the single-crystal constitutive behavior of γ-TiAl was studied by nanoindentation experiments in single-phase regions of these γ / α2-microstructures. The experiments were characterized by orientation microscopy and atomic force microscopy to quantify the orientation-dependent mechanical response during nanoindentation. Further, they were analyzed by a three-dimensional crystal plasticity finite element model that incorporated the deformation behavior of γ-TiAl. The spatially resolved activation of competing deformation mechanisms during indentation was used to assess their relative strengths. A convention was defined to unambiguously relate any indentation axis to a crystallographic orientation. Experiments and simulations were combined to study the orientation-dependent surface pile-up. The characteristic pile-up topographies were simulated throughout the unit triangle of γ-TiAl and represented graphically in the newly introduced inverse pole figure of pile-up patterns. Through this approach, easy activation of ordinary dislocation glide in stoichiometric γ-TiAl was confirmed independently from dislocation observation by transmission electron microscopy. © 2010 Acta Materialia Inc.

Recrystallized fraction was characterized in a Ti-stabilized interstitial-free (IF) steel by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), optical metallography, and hardness-based techniques. EBSD and nanoindentation were performed on overlapping areas to assess the agreement between standard methods of EBSD analysis of deformation microstructures and local hardness. The results of the study indicate that carefully implemented misorientation-based techniques may be used to effectively determine recrystallization fraction, to better agreement with the local recrystallization state than EBSD image quality, optical metallography, or microhardness-based techniques. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.

The paper presents a concept for life-time predictions of metallic structures subjected to ultra low cycle fatigue. The proposed hybrid strategy is characterized by a combination of unit cell analyses on a microstructural level and a micropore damage model used for structural analyses on the macroscopic level. To account for the large plastic deformations evolving during cyclic loading, an advanced elasto-plastic model using a Bari-Hassan-type kinematic hardening rule based on a superposition of several kinematic hardening laws according to Armstrong-Frederick is employed. Micromechanically oriented unit cell analyses are used for a calibration of the model parameters of a macroscopic Gurson-type model. Numerical results include the validation of the macroscopic Gurson model based on laboratory test results on steel specimens as well as a prototype application to a life-time prediction of a metallic spherical pressure vessel subjected to earthquake loading. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

We investigate the effect of grain size and grain orientation on deformation twinning in a Fe-22wt.% Mn-0.6wt.% C TWIP steel using microstructure observations by electron channeling contrast imaging (ECCI) and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). Samples with average grain sizes of 3μm and 50μm were deformed in tension at room temperature to different strains. The onset of twinning concurs in both materials with yielding which leads us to propose a Hall-Petch-type relation for the twinning stress using the same Hall-Petch constant for twinning as that for glide. The influence of grain orientation on the twinning stress is more complicated. At low strain, a strong influence of grain orientation on deformation twinning is observed which fully complies with Schmid's law under the assumption that slip and twinning have equal critical resolved shear stresses. Deformation twinning occurs in grains oriented close to 〈1. 1. 1〉//tensile axis directions where the twinning stress is larger than the slip stress. At high strains (0.3 logarithmic strain), a strong deviation from Schmid's law is observed. Deformation twins are now also observed in grains unfavourably oriented for twinning according to Schmid's law. We explain this deviation in terms of local grain-scale stress variations. The local stress state controlling deformation twinning is modified by local stress concentrations at grain boundaries originating, for instance, from incoming bundles of deformation twins in neighboring grains. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.

Severe plastic deformation (SPD) processes, such as equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) and high pressure torsion (HPT), are successfully employed to produce ultra fine grain (UFG) and nanocrystalline (NC) microstructures in a Ti-50.7 at% Ni shape memory alloy. The effect of grain size on subsequent Ni-rich particle precipitation during annealing is investigated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), selected area electron diffraction (SAD, SAED), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). It is observed that Ni4Ti3 precipitation is suppressed in grains of cross-sectional equivalent diameter below approximately 150 nm, and that particle coarsening is inhibited by very fine grain sizes. The results suggest that fine grain sizes impede precipitation processes by disrupting the formation of selfaccommodating particle arrays and that the arrays locally compensate for coherency strains during nucleation and growth. © 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Specimen size effects on the mechanical behavior of Zr-based bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) were investigated by compression and nanoindentation tests. In compression, even at the 1-to 10-mm scale, stable shear band propagation and extensive plastic deformation can be achieved in small (2 mm) specimens, in contrast to large (6.5 mm) specimens, which fail catastrophically after limited plastic deformation. The yield strength is independent of specimen size in this range, and plastic deformation remains highly localized in a few shear bands even in those specimens that exhibit stable shear sliding. The fracture surfaces of small specimens are smooth, without the vein patterns normally observed as characteristic features on the fracture surfaces of BMGs. During spherical nanoindentation, it is found that the upper bound of the maximum shear stress to initiate plasticity (yielding) in a Zr-based BMG is almost constant for indenter radii smaller than ̃90 μm. However, the lower bound of this maximum shear stress decreases with increasing indenter radius, probably due to the increased probability of finding defects underneath larger indenters. © The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society and ASM International 2009.

An ultrafine-grained pseudoelastic NiTi shape-memory alloy wire with 50.9 at.% Ni was examined using synchrotron X-ray diffraction during in situ uniaxial tensile loading (up to 1 GPa) and unloading. Both macroscopic stress-strain measurements and volume-averaged lattice strains are reported and discussed. The loading behavior is described in terms of elasto-plastic deformation of austenite, emergence of R phase, stress-induced martensitic transformation, and elasto-plastic deformation, grain reorientation and detwinning of martensite. The unloading behavior is described in terms of stress relaxation and reverse plasticity of martensite, reverse transformation of martensite to austenite due to stress relaxation, and stress relaxation of austenite. Microscopically, lattice strains in various crystallographic directions in the austenitic B2, martensitic R, and martensitic B19′ phases are examined during loading and unloading. It is shown that the phase transformation occurs in a localized manner along the gage length at the plateau stress. Phase volume fractions and lattice strains in various crystallographic reflections in the austenite and martensite phases are examined over two transition regions between austenite and martensite, which have a width on the order of the wire diameter. Anisotropic effects observed in various crystallographic reflections of the austenitic phase are also discussed. The results contribute to a better understanding of the tensile loading behavior, both macroscopically and microscopically, of NiTi shape-memory alloys. © 2009 Acta Materialia Inc.

Single-crystal-like films are promising candidates for magnetic shape memory (MSM) applications on the microscale. For defect reduction and stress relaxation, we apply a heat treatment to pulsed laser deposited, partial epitaxial Fe-Pd films with different compositions. By recrystallization starting from the epitaxial interface, single-crystal-like films are obtained. Deformation twins being present in the as-deposited state are completely eliminated. The epitaxial (100) orientation allows clear monitoring of the transformation from face centered cubic (fcc) austenite to face centered tetragonal (fct) martensite by x-ray diffraction experiments. Transformation from fcc austenite to fct martensite is hindered by constraints from the substrate. At temperatures down to 125 K residual fcc austenite is present. Magnetic measurements performed down to 50 K indicate that during further cooling the phase transformation to body centered tetragonal martensite occurs. The results show that annealing of laser deposited films is a promising route to obtain epitaxial Fe-Pd MSM films that are suitable for applications. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.

Micro-sized polycrystalline copper wires of diameters ranging from 5 μm to 36 μm were cyclically loaded under stress-control in many steps with increasing the applied stress amplitude after a saturation state in plastic strain is reached. It is observed that the thicker wires show smaller plastic strain at saturation as well as smaller creep strain compared to the thinner wires. The results were discussed combined with the monotonic tensile results of these micro-sized wires. © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

We compare two full-field formulations, i.e. a crystal plasticity fast Fourier transform-based (CPFFT) model and the crystal plasticity finite element model (CPFEM) in terms of the deformation textures predicted by both approaches. Plane-strain compression of a 1024-grain ensemble is simulated with CPFFT and CPFEM to assess the models in terms of their predictions of texture evolution for engineering applications. Different combinations of final textures and strain distributionsare obtained with the CPFFT and CPFEM models for this 1024-grain polycrystal. To further understand these different predictions, the correlation between grain rotations and strain gradients is investigated through the simulation of plane-strain compression of bicrystals. Finally, a study of the influence of the initial crystal orientation and the crystallographic neighborhood on grain rotations and grain subdivisions is carried out by means of plane-strain compression simulations of a 64-grain cluster. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Large strain warm deformation at different temperatures and subsequent intercritical annealing has been applied to obtain fine grained (2.4μm) and ultrafine grained (1.2μm) ferrite/martensite dual-phase (DP) steels. Their mechanical properties were tested under tensile and impact conditions and compared to a hot deformed coarse grained (12.4μm) reference material. Both yield strength and tensile strength follow a Hall-Petch type linear relationship, whereas uniform elongation and total elongation are hardly affected by grain refinement. The initial strain hardening rate as well as the post-uniform elongation increase with decreasing grain size. Ductile fracture mechanisms are considerably promoted due to grain refinement. Grain refinement further lowers the ductile-to-brittle transition temperature and leads to higher absorbed impact energies. Besides the common correlations with the ferrite grain size, these phenomena are explained in terms of the martensite particle size, shape and distribution and the more homogeneous dislocation distribution in ultrafine ferrite grains. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.

This paper focuses on the effect of fiber orientation and stacking sequence on the progressive mixed mode delamination failure in composite laminates using fracture experiments and finite element (FE) simulations. Every laminate is modelled numerically combining damageable layers with defined fiber orientations and cohesive zone interface elements, subjected to mixed mode bending. The numerical simulations are then calibrated and validated through experiments, conducted following standardized mixed mode delamination tests. The numerical model is able to successfully capture the experimentally observed effects of fiber angle orientations and variable stacking sequences on the global load-displacement response and mixed mode inter-laminar fracture toughness of the various laminates. For better understanding of the failure mechanism, fracture surfaces of laminates with different stacking sequences are also studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

In systems at elevated temperature the development of the microstructure of a material is controlled by diffusional and interface migration processes. As first step the description of the microstructure is reduced to a finite number of time-dependent characteristic parameters (CPs). Then the Thermodynamic Extremal Principle (TEP) is engaged to develop the evolution equations for these characteristic parameters. This treatment is demonstrated on a bamboo-structured material system predicting the spatial and time distribution of chemical composition as well as the deformation state. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Cyclic compressive and tensile stresses occur in metallic films and interconnects applied in sensors and microelectronic devices when exposed to temperature changes. The stresses are induced by differences in the thermal expansion coefficients of the adjacent materials. Repeated cycling leads to damage evolution and, eventually, to failure. In this study we report on a successful strategy how to avoid thermal stress induced fatigue damage. We analysed the deformation structures of 0.2-2μm thick Al films subjected to thermal cycling between 100°C and 450°C up to 10,000 times. The investigations reveal that a reduction in film thickness or controlling the Al texture and the Al/substrate interface structure can be used to prevent thermo-mechanical fatigue damage. The findings are explained by orientation dependent plasticity and differences in dislocation mechanisms for different interface structures, and less accumulated plastic strain for thinner films. The approach is expected to apply in general for metallic films on substrates. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.

The present work characterizes the microstructure of a hot-extruded Ti-45Al-5Nb-0.2B-0.2C (at.%) alloy with a fine-grained duplex microstructure after shear creep deformation (temperature 1023 K; shear stress 175 MPa; shear deformation 20%). Diffraction contrast transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was performed to identify ordinary dislocations, superdislocations and twins. The microstructure observed in TEM is interpreted taking into account the contribution of the applied stress and coherency stresses to the overall local stress state. Two specific locations in the lamellar part of the microstructure were analyzed, where either twins or superdislocations provided c-component deformation in the L10 lattice of the γ phase. Lamellar γ grains can be in soft and hard orientations with respect to the resolved shear stress provided by the external load. The presence of twins can be rationalized by the superposition of the applied stress and local coherency stresses. The presence of superdislocations in hard γ grains represents indirect evidence for additional contributions to the local stress state associated with stress redistribution during creep. © 2010 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This article reviews continuum-based variational formulations for describing the elastic-plastic deformation of anisotropic heterogeneous crystalline matter. These approaches, commonly referred to as crystal plasticity finite-element models, are important both for basic microstructure-based mechanical predictions as well as for engineering design and performance simulations involving anisotropic media. Besides the discussion of the constitutive laws, kinematics, homogenization schemes and multiscale approaches behind these methods, we also present some examples, including, in particular, comparisons of the predictions with experiments. The applications stem from such diverse fields as orientation stability, microbeam bending, single-crystal and bicrystal deformation, nanoindentation, recrystallization, multiphase steel (TRIP) deformation, and damage prediction for the microscopic and mesoscopic scales and multiscale predictions of rolling textures, cup drawing, Lankfort (r) values and stamping simulations for the macroscopic scale. © 2009 Acta Materialia Inc.

Single-crystals of γ-TiAl cannot be grown for the compositions present inside the two-phase γ/α 2-microstructures that show good mechanical properties. Therefore the single crystal constitutive behaviour of γ-TiAl was studied by nanoindentation experiments in single phase regions of these microstructures. The experiments were extensively characterized by a combined experimental approach to clarify the orientation dependent mechanical response during nanoindentation. They further were analyzed by a three-dimensional crystal plasticity finite element model that incorporated the deformation behaviour of γ-TiAl. The spatially resolved activation of competing deformation mechanisms during indentation was used to assess their relative strengths. On the length-scale of multi-grain aggregates two kinds of microstructures were investigated. The lamellar microstructure was analyzed in terms of kinematic constraints perpendicular to densely spaced lamellar boundaries which lead to pronounced plastic anisotropy. Secondly, the mechanical behaviour of massively transformed microstructures was modelled by assuming a lower degree of kinematic constraints. This resulted in less plastic anisotropy on a single grain scale and lower compatibility stresses in a 64-grain aggregate. On the macroscopic length scale, the results could possibly explain the pre-yielding of lamellar microstructures. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Spherical scratch tests were conducted in individual grains of a randomly oriented polycrystalline body-centered-cubic (bcc) Ti-Nb alloy. For each grain, scratch tests were conducted at four different levels of normal load, which resulted in varying amounts of plastic strain during indentation. The results show a dependence of the horizontal load component on the crystallographic orientation and on the amount of plastic strain. The component of the horizontal force that resulted from plastic deformation was found to correlate with the active slip systems for the particular grain orientation. © 2010 Materials Research Society.

Two-dimensional dislocation dynamics (2D-DD) simulations under fully periodic boundary conditions are employed to study the relation between microstructure and strength of a material. The material is modeled as an elastic continuum that contains a defect microstructure consisting of a preexisting dislocation population, dislocation sources, and grain boundaries. The mechanical response of such a material is tested by uniaxially loading it up to a certain stress and allowing it to relax until the strain rate falls below a threshold. The total plastic strain obtained for a certain stress level yields the quasi-static stressstrain curve of the material. Besides assuming FrankRead-like dislocation sources, we also investigate the influence of a pre-existing dislocation density on the flow stress of the model material. Our results show that despite its inherent simplifications the 2D-DD model yields material behavior that is consistent with the classical theories of Taylor and HallPetch. Consequently, if set up in a proper way, these models are suited to study plastic deformation of polycrystalline materials. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In situ transmission electron microscopy straining experiments with concurrent macroscopic stress-strain measurements were performed to study the effect of microstructural heterogeneity on the deformation behavior of nanocrystalline metal films. In microstructurally heterogeneous gold films (mean grain size dm = 70 nm) comprising randomly oriented grains, dislocation activity is confined to relatively larger grains, with smaller grains deforming elastically, even at applied strains approaching 1.2%. This extended microplasticity leads to build-up of internal stresses, inducing a large Bauschinger effect during unloading. Microstructurally heterogeneous aluminum films (dm = 140 nm) also show similar behavior. In contrast, microstructurally homogeneous aluminum films comprising mainly two grain families, both favorably oriented for dislocation glide, show limited microplastic deformation and minimal Bauschinger effect despite having a comparable mean grain size (dm = 120 nm). A simple model is proposed to describe these observations. Overall, our results emphasize the need to consider both microstructural size and heterogeneity in modeling the mechanical behavior of nanocrystalline metals. © 2010 Acta Materialia Inc.

The aim of this work is to investigate the microstructure evolution, stressstrain response and strain hardening behavior of microscale beams. For that purpose, two single crystal cantilever beams in the size dependent regime were manufactured by ion beam milling and beams were bent with an indenter device. A crystal plasticity material model for large deformations was implemented in a finite element framework to further investigate the effect of boundary constraints. Simulations were performed using bulk material properties of single crystal copper without any special treatment for the strain gradients. The difference between the slopes of the experimental and the simulated force displacement curves suggested negligible amount of strain gradient hardening compared to the statistical hardening mechanisms. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Local lattice rotations and in-grain orientation gradients at κ precipitates in matrix grains with orientations near the 45° rotated cube {0 0 1}〈1 1 0〉 (RC) and the γ-fiber components {1 1 1}〈1 1 2〉 were investigated in a Fe3Al alloy warm-rolled to reductions of between 10% and 60%. Near-RC grains showed larger local lattice rotations at precipitates than γ-fiber grains. In RC-oriented grains the local lattice rotations about the transverse direction (TD) were dominant at low reductions, but rotations about the rolling direction (RD) also occurred at higher strains. In the γ-fiber grains the axes of the in-grain lattice rotations were scattered between TD and RD. The rotations around the particles and their orientation dependence were analyzed using 3-D crystal plasticity finite-element simulations of a spherical inclusion in a plane strain deformed matrix of different orientations, namely RC, {1 1 1}〈1 1 2〉 and {1 1 1}〈0 1 1〉. © 2010 AWE and Crown Copyright. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Room-temperature deformation of a niobium-rich TiAl alloy with duplex microstructure has been numerically investigated. The model links the microstructural features at micro- and meso-scale by the two-level (FE 2) multi-scale approach. The deformation mechanisms of the considered phases were described in the micro-mechanical crystal-plasticity model. Initial material parameters for the model were taken from the literature and validated using tensile experiments at macro-scale. For the niobium-rich TiAl alloy further adaptation of the crystal plasticity parameters is proposed. Based on these model parameters, the influences of the grain orientation, grain size, and texture on the global mechanical behavior have been investigated. The contributions of crystal deformation modes (slips and dislocations in the phases) to the mechanical response are also analyzed. The results enable a quantitative prediction of relationships between microstructure and mechanical behavior on global and local scale, including an assessment of possible crack initiation sites. The model can be used for microstructure optimization to obtain better material properties. © 2010 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Subjecting a thin NiTi specimen to uniaxial tension often leads to a localized martensitic transformation: macroscopic transformation bands form and propagate through the specimen, separating it into regions of fully transformed martensite and original austenite. In the present study, the alternating current potential drop (ACPD) technique is used to analyze the change in electrical resistance of ultra-fine grained NiTi wires subjected to a broad range of thermo-mechanical load cases: (i) uniaxial tensile straining at constant temperatures (pseudoelastic deformation); (ii) cooling and heating through the transformation range at constant load (actuator load case); (iii) a combination of mechanical and thermal loading. We monitor the ACPD signals in several zones along the gauge length of specimens, and we demonstrate that a localized type of transformation is a generic feature of pseudoelastic as well as of shape memory deformation. Moreover, the ACPD signals allow to differentiate between temperature-induced martensite (formed during cooling at no or relatively small loads), stress-induced martensite, and reoriented martensite (formed under load at low temperatures). © 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

An investigation on the integrity of micro-hotplates using in situ digital holographic microscopy is reported. The surface topography and surface evolution of the devices during high-temperature operation (heating/cooling cycles) is measured with nanometer-scale resolution. A localized permanent out-of-plane surface deformation of 40% of the membrane thickness caused by the top measurement electrodes occurring after the first cycle is observed. The integrity-related issues caused by such a permanent deformation are discussed. © 2006 IEEE.

In this study, we produced four composite materials with Al-based matrix reinforced by Al-Cu-Fe particles initially of the quasicrystalline (QC) phase. The processing route was a gas-pressure infiltration of QC particle preforms by molten commercial Al and Al alloys. The resulting composites were investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) working in the energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) mode and by X-ray diffraction (XRD). It is shown that such a synthesis technique leads to the formation of various phases resulting from specific diffusion processes. Compression tests were performed at constant strain rate in the temperature range 290-770 K. The stress-strain curves look similar to those of Al-Cu-Fe poly-quasicrystals and show the yield point, the origin of which is however of very different nature. Composite deformation is recognised to occur through the rupture of a hard phase skeleton and localised plastic deformation in the matrix. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

We review microstructures and properties of metal matrix composites produced by severe plastic deformation of multiphase alloys. Typical processings are wire drawing, ball milling, roll bonding, equal-channel angular extrusion, and high-pressure torsion of multiphase materials. Similar phenomena occur between solids in frictional contact such as in tribology, friction stir welding, and explosive joining. The resulting compounds are characterized by very high interface and dislocation density, chemical mixing, and atomic-scale structural transitions at heterointerfaces. Upon straining, the phases form into nanoscaled filaments, This leads to enormous strengthening combined with good ductility, as in damascene steels or pearlitic wires, which are among the strongest nanostructured bulk materials available today (tensile strength above 6GPa). Similar materials are Cu-Nb and Cu-Ag composites, which also have good electrical conductivity that qualifies them for use in high-field magnets. Beyond the engineering opportunities, there are also exciting fundamental questions. They relate to the nature of the complex dislocation, amorphization, and mechanical alloying mechanisms upon straining and their relationship to the enormous strength. Studying these mechanisms is enabled by mature atomic-scale characterization and simulation methods. A better understanding of the extreme strength in these materials also provides insight into modern alloy design based on complex solid solution phenomena.

The effects of grain size and of crack-tip blunting radius on the fracture toughness of tungsten polycrystals are studied by using a combined dislocation dynamics/cohesive zone model (CZM). Two-dimensional dislocation dynamics are employed to analyze crack-tip plasticity and crack propagation is characterized by a CZM. The geometry of the crack and the corresponding boundary conditions are described by means of a boundary element method with dislocation dipoles as fundamental solution. Grain boundaries are introduced as obstacles for dislocation motion. Numerical experiments reveal that the fracture toughness decreases with grain size, because grain boundaries confine the plastic zone. This effect is particularly pronounced at small loading rates, where the unconfined plastic zone is large. Our results also show that fracture toughness scales with the tip radius as the stress concentration at the crack tip is reduced and the plastic zone is enlarged. © 2009 Acta Materialia Inc.

The deformation behavior of pseudoelastic NiTi shape memory alloys under multiaxial loading conditions is influenced by the evolution of anisotropic martensitic microstructures. We use structural data and elastic constants of B19' martensite calculated from first principles in a micromechanical model to simulate uni- and biaxial experiments with complex strain paths. The microstructural evolution in terms of volume fractions of different martensite variants and the effect of their elastic anisotropy are investigated in detail. The calculated macroscopic stress-strain data are in good agreement with experimental results reported. The simulations elucidate the relative importance of elastic and inelastic deformation mechanisms (twinning, detwinning and reorientation) for the multiaxial mechanical properties of NiTi. They provide a clear picture of the interplay between phase transformation, evolution of martensitic microstructures and macroscopic mechanical behavior. It is demonstrated that apparently small changes of variant volume fractions in twinned microstructures can significantly affect macroscopic stress states. © 2009 Acta Materialia Inc.

Nanoparticles can be produced by wet grinding in stirred media mills if agglomeration is prevented by stabilization of the particles. Since the fracture mechanisms at the lower nanoscale are not yet understood, we studied the evolution of the microstructure within tin dioxide particles. Electrostatic stabilization allows the formation of tin dioxide with a mean particle size of 25 nm as measured by dynamic light scattering. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) images show particles well below 10 nm and mean crystallite sizes of 9 nm were obtained from X-ray diffraction by applying the Rietveld refinement method. Additionally, TEM and HRTEM analyses were conducted to gain detailed insight into the microstructural effects governing the grinding process. Microscopy revealed surprisingly rich phenomena including the formation of shear bands, twinning and stacking faults that directly affect the grinding behavior. Interestingly the ceramic nanoparticles showed not only fracture patterns expected from brittle fracture but also many traces of plastic deformation. For comparison the uniaxial compression of particles up to 30 nm in diameter was simulated using molecular dynamics. The simulated particles shared microstructural details with the real samples, most importantly the shear bands which lead to significant plastic deformation. The internal microstructure produced during multiple particle stressing events in the mill and also observed in the simulations is directly linked to the fracture mechanism and the experimentally observed grinding limit. © 2009 Acta Materialia Inc.

The structural integrity of polypropylene (PP) matrix composites reinforced by natural wood fibers is investigated by digital image correlation (DIC) coupled with tensile tests. The use of the material as an alternative construction material requires extensive understanding of its micromechanical properties, which primarily define its performance. Addition of several additives such as coupling agents is common practice for such materials. These ingredients improve the performance of these materials mainly by improvement of the chemical and physical interactions between the nonpolar matrix and the polar wood fibers. These interactions facilitate the transfer of the applied deformation particularly in the interphase region between the polymer matrix and the reinforcing fibers. Such localized changes can influence the performance of the material specially its micromechanical behavior. The DIC via photogrammetry was used to study the spatial distribution of the accumulated plastic surface strain, which is based on pattern recognition of the surface before and after straining. The heterogeneous strain distribution reveals a structural inhomogeneity of the material. The magnitude of local strain was much higher than the global strain, suggesting preferred regions for plastic deformation formed by the microstructure. © 2008.

Pure, ultrafine-grained (UFG) Cu produced by equal channel angular pressing (route B(C)) at ambient temperature was deformed in uniaxial compression at elevated temperatures up to 418 K = 0.31 T(m) (T(m): melting point). The deformation is accompanied by softening. Analysis of the deformation behavior and microstructural observations provide evidence that the softening is related to homogeneous growth of the subgrain size towards a steady-state value which depends on stress as in materials of conventional grain size and is related to growth of the spacing of high-angle boundaries. The softening can be explained by a recently published dislocation model of deformation of UFG materials. In addition, local coarsening of the structure by recrystallization produces bimodal grain structures and leads to strong softening when the temperature is sufficiently high during slow deformation after prior fast deformation and during annealing. (C) 2009 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The maximum actuation frequency of magnetic shape-memory alloys (MSMAs) significantly increases with decreasing size of the transducer making MSMAs interesting candidates for small scale actuator applications. To study the mechanical properties of Ni-Mn-Ga single crystals on small length scales, two single-domain micropillars with dimensions of 10×15×30 μ m 3 were fabricated from a Ni-Mn-Ga monocrystal using dual beam focused ion beam machining. The pillars were oriented such that the crystallographic c direction was perpendicular to the loading direction. The pillars were compressed to maximum stresses of 350 and 50 MPa, respectively. Atomic force microscopy and magnetic force microscopy were performed prior to fabrication of the pillars and following the deformation experiments. Both micropillars were deformed by twinning as evidenced by the stress-strain curve. For one pillar, a permanent deformation of 3.6% was observed and ac twins (10M martensite) were identified after unloading. For the other pillar, only 0.7% remained upon unloading. No twins were found in this pillar after unloading. The recovery of deformation is discussed in the light of pseudoelastic twinning and twin-substrate interaction. The twinning stress was higher than in similar macroscopic material. However, further studies are needed to substantiate a size effect. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.

The mechanical response of engineering materials evaluated through continuum fracture mechanics typically assumes that a crack or void initially exists, but it does not provide information about the nucleation of such flaws in an otherwise flawless microstructure. How such flaws originate, particularly at grain (or phase) boundaries is less clear. Experimentally, "good" vs. "bad" grain boundaries are often invoked as the reasons for critical damage nucleation, but without any quantification. The state of knowledge about deformation at or near grain boundaries, including slip transfer and heterogeneous deformation, is reviewed to show that little work has been done to examine how slip interactions can lead to damage nucleation. A fracture initiation parameter developed recently for a low ductility model material with limited slip systems provides a new definition of grain boundary character based upon operating slip and twin systems (rather than an interfacial energy based definition). This provides a way to predict damage nucleation density on a physical and local (rather than a statistical) basis. The parameter assesses the way that highly activated twin systems are aligned with principal stresses and slip system Burgers vectors. A crystal plasticity-finite element method (CP-FEM) based model of an extensively characterized microstructural region has been used to determine if the stress-strain history provides any additional insights about the relationship between shear and damage nucleation. This analysis shows that a combination of a CP-FEM model augmented with the fracture initiation parameter shows promise for becoming a predictive tool for identifying damage-prone boundaries. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The present work addresses functional fatigue of binary NiTi and ternary NiTiCu (with 5, 7.5, and 10 at. pct Cu) shape memory (SM) spring actuators. We study how the alloy composition and processing affect the actuator stability during thermomechanical cycling. Spring lengths and temperatures were monitored and it was found that functional fatigue results in an accumulation of irreversible strain (in austenite and martensite) and in increasing martensite start temperatures. We present phenomenological equations that quantify both phenomena. We show that cyclic actuator stability can be improved by using precycling, subjecting the material to cold work, and adding copper. Adding copper is more attractive than cold work, because it improves cyclic stability without sacrificing the exploitable actuator stroke. Copper reduces the width of the thermal hysteresis and improves geometrical and thermal actuator stability, because it results in a better crystallographic compatibility between the parent and the product phase. There is a good correlation between the width of the thermal hysteresis and the intensity of irrecoverable deformation associated with thermomechanical cycling. We interpret this finding on the basis of a scenario in which dislocations are created during the phase transformations that remain in the microstructure during subsequent cycling. These dislocations facilitate the formation of martensite (increasing martensite start (MS) temperatures) and account for the accumulation of irreversible strain in martensite and austenite. © The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society and ASM International 2009.