skip to main content

Attention:

The NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR) system and access will be unavailable from 11:00 PM ET on Friday, September 13 until 2:00 AM ET on Saturday, September 14 due to maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience.


Title: Critical Shape for the Growth of Grain Boundary Twin Embryos in Mg and Mg Alloys: Crystal Plasticity Modeling
Application of polycrystalline hexagonal close packed (HCP) metals in engineering designs has been constrained by their anisotropic responses due to twinning and limited plasticity. In deformation, twins most often initiate at grain boundaries (GBs), and thicken and propagate across the grain. In this work, the GB twin embryos in Mg and Mg alloys, and the conditions that influence their propagation are investigated. Using a micromechanical crystal plasticity model, the role of embryo shape on the driving forces prevailing at the embryo boundaries that could support its expansion is studied. The modeled embryos are either planar, extending more in the shear direction than normal to the twin plane, or equiaxed. Results show that the thinner the embryo, the greater the driving forces for both thickening and forward propagation. Alloys with low prismatic-to-basal critical resolved shear stress (CRSS) ratios promote embryo thickening and large CRSS values for the slip mode that primarily accommodates the twin shear encourage propagation. The neighboring grains with orientations that enable local accommodation of the embryo twin shear by pyramidal slip promote forward propagation but have little effect on thickening. When two like embryos lie along the same GB, their paired interaction promotes forward propagation but hinders thickening.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2051390
NSF-PAR ID:
10411838
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Alloys
Volume:
1
Issue:
2
ISSN:
2674-063X
Page Range / eLocation ID:
212 to 231
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. In wrought magnesium alloys, room temperature plasticity is largely controlled by limited slip systems such as basal slip and tension/compression twins. The insufficient number of active slip systems limits strength and ductility preventing broader structural applicability of Mg-alloys. Hence, we employ first-principle calculations to investigate the effects of Y and Al alloying elements on shearability and dislocation motion on various slip systems through ideal shear resistance and generalized stacking fault energy calculations. Yttrium is seen to lower the ideal shear resistance and dislocation motion energetics on all the slip systems. On the other hand, aluminum increases the ideal shear resistance but decreases the energy barrier for dislocation motion on various slip systems. The profound effects of solute addition result from the charge transfer between the solute atom and surrounding magnesium atoms. 
    more » « less
  2. Schuh, Christopher A (Ed.)
    The {-1012} tensile twins terminating inside the grains of a deformed Mg-Y alloy were investigated by transmission electron microscopy. The crystallographic features of terminating twins and associated slip structures were quantified and correlated. The local stresses developed at a terminating {-1012} twin were computed using crystal plasticity simulations in order to interpret the observed slip patterns. Results indicate that both basal and matrix glide were involved in accommodating the plastic stresses developed in the vicinity of terminating twins. Along the twin boundary, the defect contrast consistent with that of lattice dislocations and twinning partials was observed. Based on these observations, a dislocation reaction is proposed that establishes an interrelationship between the observed matrix glide and {-1012} twinning in Mg-Y alloys. 
    more » « less
  3. Deformation twinning is a prevalent plastic deformation mode in hexagonal close-packed (HCP) materials, such as magnesium, titanium, and zirconium, and their alloys. Experimental observations indicate that these twins occur heterogeneously across the polycrystalline microstructure during deformation. Morphological and crystallographic distribution of twins in a deformed microstructure, or the so-called twinning microstructure, significantly controls material deformation behavior, ductility, formability, and failure response. Understanding the development of the twinning microstructure at the grain scale can benefit design efforts to optimize microstructures of HCP materials for specific high-performance structural applications. This article reviews recent research efforts that aim to relate the polycrystalline microstructure with the development of its twinning microstructure through knowledge of local stress fields, specifically local stresses produced by twins and at twin/grain–boundary intersections on the formation and thickening of twins, twin transmission across grain boundaries, twin–twin junction formation, and secondary twinning. 
    more » « less
  4. In this paper, in situ high-resolution electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) is combined with concurrent atomistic-continuum (CAC) simulations to study the interactions between dislocation-mediated slip and grain boundaries (GBs) in Ni. It is found that the local stress associated with slip-GB intersections first increases upon the pileup of dislocations, then remains high even after the nucleation of dislocations in the neighboring grain, only relaxing after the nucleated dislocations propagate away from the GB due to more incoming dislocations participating in the pileup. The local stress relaxation is accompanied by an atomic-scale GB structure reconfiguration, which affects not only the subsequent dislocation transmission, but also the configuration of those dislocations away from the GB. These findings demonstrate the importance of incorporating local stress history at higher length scale models, such as crystal plasticity finite element. 
    more » « less
  5. Dilute Mg-Al-Ca-Mn alloys exhibit excellent strength-ductility combinations in the peak-aged condition due to ordered, single atomic layer Guinier-Preston (GP) zones. The present work explains why rolled sheet material is softer and less responsive to aging, as compared to extruded. Using crystal-plasticity modeling, it is shown that the initial texture of the rolled material permits the soft modes, basal slip and twinning, to accommodate more of the strain during in-plane tension, and they are less responsive to hardening by the finely dispersed GP zones. Even with the same number density of GP zones, the extruded material is stronger in tension along the extrusion axis due to an initial texture which forces higher relative activity of prismatic slip, a mode previously shown to be strongly affected by the GP zones. The present work reemphasizes the significant role of the initial texture in determining the strength and anisotropy of non-cubic metals and alloys. 
    more » « less