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Competing Grain Boundary and Interior Deformation Mechanisms with Varying Sizes

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Handbook of Mechanics of Materials

Abstract

In typical coarse-grained alloys, the dominant plastic deformations are dislocation gliding or climbing, and material strengths can be tuned by dislocation interactions with grain boundaries, precipitates, solid solutions, and other defects. With the reduction of grain size, the increase of material strengths follows the classic Hall-Petch relationship up to nano-grained materials. Even at room temperatures, nano-grained materials exhibit strength softening, or called the inverse Hall-Petch effect, as grain boundary processes take over as the dominant deformation mechanisms. On the other hand, at elevated temperatures, grain boundary processes compete with grain interior deformation mechanisms over a wide range of the applied stress and grain sizes. This book chapter reviews and compares the rate equation model and the microstructure-based finite element simulations. The latter explicitly accounts for the grain boundary sliding, grain boundary diffusion and migration, as well as the grain interior dislocation creep. Therefore the explicit finite element method has clear advantages in problems where microstructural heterogeneities play a critical role, such as in the gradient microstructure in shot peening or weldment. Furthermore, combined with the Hall-Petch effect and its breakdown, the above competing processes help construct deformation mechanism maps by extending from the classic Frost-Ashby type to the ones with the dependence of grain size.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Wei Zhang, Yanfei Gao & Tai-Gang Nieh

  2. Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA

    Yanfei Gao

Authors
  1. Wei Zhang
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  2. Yanfei Gao
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  3. Tai-Gang Nieh
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yanfei Gao .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Materials Science and Strength of Materials, University of Stuttgart Institute for Materials Testing, Stuttgart, Germany

    Siegfried Schmauder

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, National Taiwan University Department of Civil Engineering, Taipei, T´ai-pei, Taiwan

    Chuin-Shan Chen

  3. BEC 254, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, USA

    Krishan K. Chawla

  4. Fulton School of Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

    Nikhilesh Chawla

  5. Engineering Mechanics, Zhejiang University Engineering Mechanics, Hangzhou, China

    Weiqiu Chen

  6. Katayanagi Advanced Research Laboratorie, Tokyo University of Technology Katayanagi Advanced Research Laboratorie, Tokyo, Japan

    Yutaka Kagawa

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Zhang, W., Gao, Y., Nieh, TG. (2018). Competing Grain Boundary and Interior Deformation Mechanisms with Varying Sizes. In: Schmauder, S., Chen, CS., Chawla, K., Chawla, N., Chen, W., Kagawa, Y. (eds) Handbook of Mechanics of Materials. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6855-3_75-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6855-3_75-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-6855-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-6855-3

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