An official website of the United States government
We demonstrate the possibility of spatially controlling the degree of grain boundary serration in functionally graded stainless steels, by alloying powder mixtures on-the-fly during directed energy deposition additive manufacturing. Grain boundary serration is an attractive feature in polycrystalline microstructures, as it confers superior resistance to crack propagation and hot corrosion. Quantitative measurements at the microstructure scale coupled with thermodynamic calculations allow us to propose a mechanism to explain the origin of grain boundary serration. The formation of transient δ ferrite during solidification and its subsequent dissolution during cooling, governed by the Cr/Ni ratio, leads to the formation of remnant ferrite particles that hinder the growth of austenite grains in the solid state via a Smith-Zener pinning phenomenon. This finding opens new perspectives for grain boundary engineering, in-situ during additive manufacturing.
more »
« less
Origins of twin boundaries in additive manufactured stainless steels
316L and 304L stainless steels and a compositional gradient of both are fabricated using the same processing parameters via laser directed energy deposition additive manufacturing. In those alloys, the increase in chromium-to-nickel ratio is accompanied with grain refinement and formation of a high density of twin boundaries, i.e. sigma3 boundaries. By means of electron microscopy, crystallographic and thermodynamic calculations, we demonstrate that two mechanisms arising from the ferrite-to-austenite solidification mode are at the origin of twin boundary formation and grain refinement: 1) inter-variant boundaries emerging from the encounter of pairs of austenite grains formed from a common ferrite orientation with Kurdjumov-Sachs orientation relationship; 2) icosahedral short-range-ordering-induced (ISRO) nucleation of twin-related grains directly from the solidifying liquid. These findings define new routes to achieve grain boundary engineering in a single step in FeCrNi alloys, by tailoring the solidification pathway during the AM process, enabling the design of functionally graded materials with site-specific properties.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2236640
- PAR ID:
- 10509341
- Publisher / Repository:
- Elsevier
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Acta Materialia
- ISSN:
- 1359-6454
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 120035
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Magnesium (Mg) alloys are promising lightweight structural materials whose limited strength and room‐temperature ductility limit applications. Precise control of deformation‐induced twinning through microstructural alloy design is being investigated to overcome these deficiencies. Motivated by the need to understand and control twin formation during deformation in Mg alloys, a series of magnesium‐yttrium (Mg–Y) alloys are investigated using electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). Analysis of EBSD maps produces a large dataset of microstructural information for >40000 grains. To quantitatively determine how processing parameters and microstructural features are correlated with twin formation, interpretable machine learning (ML) is employed to statistically analyze the individual effects of microstructural features on twinning. An ML classifier is trained to predict the likelihood of twin formation, given inputs including grain microstructural information and synthesis and deformation conditions. Then, feature selection is used to score the relative importance of these inputs for twinning in Mg–Y alloys. It is determined that using information only about grain size, grain orientation, and total applied strain, the ML model can predict the presence of twinning and that other parameters do not significantly contribute to increasing the model's predictive accuracy. Herein, the utility of ML for gaining new fundamental insights into materials processing is illustrated.more » « less
-
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
-
Twins in hexagonal close-packed polycrystals, most often nucleate at grain-boundaries (GBs), propagate into the grain and terminate at opposing GBs. Regularly, multiple parallel twins of the same variant form inside the same grain. When twins terminate inside the grains, rather than the grain boundary, they tend to form a staggered structure. Whether a staggered twin structure or the more common grain spanning twin structure forms can greatly affect mechanical behavior. In this work, the underlying mechanism for the formation of staggered twins is studied using an elasto-visco-plastic fast Fourier transform model, which quantifies the local stresses associated with 1012-type staggered twins in magnesium for different configurations. The model results suggest that when a twin tip is close to the lateral side of another twin, the driving force for twin propagation is significantly reduced. As a result, the staggered twin structure forms.more » « less
-
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
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actamat.2024.120035
