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The contribution of grain boundary sliding in tensile deformation of an ultrafine-grained aluminum alloy having high strength and high ductility

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Abstract

An as-cast Al–7 % Si alloy was processed by high-pressure torsion (HPT) for up to 10 turns at temperatures of 298 or 445 K. The HPT-processed samples had ultrafine-grained structures and they were tested in tension at room temperature at various strain rates in the range from 1.0 × 10−4 to 1.0 × 10−2 s−1. The contributions of grain boundary sliding (GBS) to the total strain were measured directly using atomic force microscopy. Samples simultaneously showing both high strength and high ductility contained the highest fractions of high-angle grain boundaries (HAGB) and exhibited the highest contributions from GBS, whereas samples showing high strength but low ductility gave negligible values for the sliding contributions. It is concluded that high strength and high ductility require both an ultrafine grain size and a high fraction of HAGB.

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Notes

  1. Since the strain datum points were not infinitesimally close, dσ/dε was approximated as Δσ/Δε where Δε is the difference between the finitely spaced strains over which the values of stress changed by Δσ.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the help of Mr. Devi Lal and Mr. Amit Kumar in GBS data analysis and SEM of fractured surfaces, respectively, and they thank Dr. Sarath Menon of the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, USA, for providing the cast Al–7 % Si samples. This work was partially funded by IISc-STC Grant # ISTC0305 and a Seed Grant (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore) to PK. The work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation of the United States under Grant No. DMR-1160966 and in part by the European Research Council under ERC Grant Agreement No. 267464-SPDMETALS (TGL).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India

    Tarang Mungole & Praveen Kumar

  2. Division of Materials Science and Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, 133-791, South Korea

    Megumi Kawasaki

  3. Departments of Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90089-1453, USA

    Megumi Kawasaki & Terence G. Langdon

  4. Materials Research Group, Faculty of Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK

    Terence G. Langdon

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  1. Tarang Mungole
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  2. Praveen Kumar
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  3. Megumi Kawasaki
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  4. Terence G. Langdon
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Correspondence to Praveen Kumar.

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Mungole, T., Kumar, P., Kawasaki, M. et al. The contribution of grain boundary sliding in tensile deformation of an ultrafine-grained aluminum alloy having high strength and high ductility. J Mater Sci 50, 3549–3561 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-8915-2

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