MM 205

Lecture 3

Slip and strengthening

Plastic deformation by slip

❑ Plastic deformation can occur by many mechanisms → SLIP is the most important of them.
❑ At the fundamental level plastic deformation (in crystalline materials) by slip involves the
motion of dislocations on the slip plane → finally leaving the crystal/grain (creating a step of
Burgers vector).
❑ Slip is caused by shear stresses
❑ A slip system consists of a slip direction lying on a slip plane.
❑ Under any given external loading conditions, slip will be initiated on a particular slip system if
the Resolved Shear Stress (RSS) exceeds a critical value [the Critical Resolved Shear Stress
(CRSS)].
❑ For slip to occur in polycrystalline materials, 5 independent slip systems are required. CCP
crystals (Cu, Al, Au) have excellent ductility.
❑ At higher temperatures more slip systems may become active and hence polycrystalline
materials which are brittle at low temperature, may become ductile at high temperature.
What happens at yielding ?

The shear stress on 450 plane to applied uniaxial tensile stress reaches
Yield strength of the material – crystal starts deforming by shear

On atomic scale
Weakening of crystals by dislocations
Preference for shear – planes and directions
Slip systems
Slip Planes
• Highest Planar Density
• Corresponds to most widely spaced planes

Slip Directions
• Highest Linear Density

Slip System
• Slip Plane + Slip Direction
Slip systems

▪ In CCP, HCP materials the slip system consists of a close packed direction on a close packed plane.
▪ Just the existence of a slip system does not guarantee slip → slip is competing against other processes
like twinning and fracture. If the stress to cause slip is very high (i.e. CRSS is very high), then
fracture may occur before slip (like in brittle ceramics).
Where Slip will take place in single crystal?

- We know that shear stress is required for slip to take place

- We also know from stress analysis that shear stress is maximum at 450 to applied stress
Then is slip always going to take place at this angle ?

NO

Slip will take place in close packed plane in close packed direction (which may not be at 450)

Therefore, orientation of active slip planes with respect to applied stress is important
Critical Resolved Shear Stress (CRSS)
❑ The shear stress resolved onto the slip plane is responsible for slip.
❑ When the Resolved Shear Stress (RSS) reaches a critical value → Critical Resolved Shear
Stress (CRSS) → plastic deformation starts

 Force  F Cos  Slip plane


Stress =    =   normal
 Area 1D  A / Cos 
A
 RSS =  Cos Cos Schmid factor

Slip direction
Schmid’s law  
Slip is initiated when  RSS   CRSS A’

 CRSS
Yield strength of a single crystal y =
Cos Cos
▪ Maximum shear stress is in a plane inclined at ( =) 45.
▪ The vertical (90) and horizontal plane (0) feel no shear stresses.
Stress to move a dislocation: Peierls – Nabarro (PN) stress

❑ There is a critical stress required to move a dislocation.

❑ At the fundamental level the motion of a dislocation involves the rearrangement of
bonds → requires application of shear stress on the slip plane.
❑ When ‘sufficient stress’ is applied the dislocation moves from one metastable
energy minimum to another.
❑ The original model is due to Peierls & Nabarro (formula as below) and the
‘sufficient’ stress which needs to be applied is called Peierls-Nabarro stress (PN
stress) or simply Peierls stress.
❑ Width of the dislocation is considered as a basis for the ease of motion of a
dislocation in the model which is a function of the bonding in the material.

 2w  ▪ G → shear modulus of the crystal

− 
 PN = G e  b  ▪ w → width of the dislocation
▪ b → |b|
How does the motion of dislocations lead to a macroscopic shape change?
(From microscopic slip to macroscopic deformation )

❑ When one bends a rod of aluminium to a new shape, it involves processes occurring at
various lengthscales
❑ However, at the fundamental level slip is at the heart of the whole process.
❑ To understand ‘how slip can lead to shape change?’; we consider a square crystal
deformed to a rhombus (as Below).

Net shape change

 Step formed
Dislocation
when dislocation
formed by
leaves the crystal
pushing in
a plane  
b

Now visualize dislocations being punched in on successive planes → moving and finally
leaving the crystal
This sequence of events finally leads to deformed shape which can be approximated to a
rhombus

Net shape change

Tensile curve of a single crystal

Stage 1 : Most active slip system gets initiated once it reaches CRSS value
Stage 2 : As stress increases, other slip systems may get activated. The lattice rotation also
brings other slip systems in favorable orientation. Dislocation interaction leads to linear
strain hardening
Stage 3 : Saturation, increasing cross slip resulting in decrease in strain hardening
Single crystal vs polycrystal

• In single crystal, only constraint is at the ends of crystal

• In polycrystal, multiple constraints in terms of other grains , higher yield strength
How to increase the strength?

❑ Slip of dislocations weakens the crystal. Hence we have two strategies to strengthen the
crystal/material:
 completely remove dislocations → difficult, dislocations can also nucleate during loading
 increase resistance to the motion of dislocations or put impediments to the motion of
dislocations → this can be done in many ways as listed below.

❑ Solid solution strengthening – add alloying elements

❑ Cold Work → increase point defect and dislocation density
(Cold work increases Yield stress but decreases the % elongation, i.e. ductility).
❑ Decrease in grain size → grain boundaries provide an impediment to the motion of
dislocations (Hall-Petch hardening).
❑ Precipitation/dispersion hardening → introduce precipitates or inclusions in the path of
dislocations which impede the motion of dislocations.
What causes Strain hardening? → multiplication of dislocations

❑ The increase in flow stress with strain is called strain hardening (or work hardening).
❑ Plastic deformation is caused by dislocations moving and leaving the crystal  that dislocation density
should decrease with plastic deformation. However, it is observed that dislocation density increases with
strain! Further, if dislocations are the agent weakening the crystal  then with increased dislocation
density the material should get weaker! But, we observe on the contrary an increase in strength!

Two important questions need to be answered:

ing→ X
▪ How does the dislocation density increase? en
hard
▪ What leads to strain hardening? train
S

❑ This implies some sources of dislocation multiplication /

 →
creation should exist &
❑ More dislocations is somehow causing a ‘traffic jam’ kind
of scenario and leading to strengthening.
 →
Dislocation sources
❑ It is difficult to obtain crystals without dislocations
❑ Dislocation can arise by/form:
▪ Solidification (errors in the formation of a perfect crystal lattice)
▪ Plastic deformation (nucleation and multiplication)
▪ Irradiation

Some specific sources/methods of formation/multiplication of dislocations include :

▪ Solidification from the melt.

▪ Grain boundary ledges and step emit dislocations.
▪ Aggregation and collapse of vacancies to form a disc or prismatic loop.
▪ High stresses
► Heterogeneous nucleation at second phase particles
► During phase transformation.
▪ Frank-Read source.
▪ Orowan bowing mechanism.
Dislocation pile-up – basis of strengthening

✓ Pile-up of dislocations at barrier

Barrier can be :
▪ Point defects (solid solution hardening)
▪ Grain boundary (GB strengthening)
▪ Dislocations (work hardening)
▪ Precipitates (precipitate hardening)
Dislocation- point defect interaction

Point defects:
- Vacancies
- Solute atoms

➢ Vacancies introduce tensile strain around them Substitutional solid solution

➢ Substitutional solute atom :

- create tensile strain field if size is smaller than parent atom
- create compressive strain field if size is bigger than parent atom

lnterstitial solid solution

Dislocation- point defect interaction

Vacancy or smaller substitutional solute atom Tensile strain field

Larger substitutional solute atom Compressive strain field

Interstitial solute atoms will show similar behavior as substitutional solute atoms

Dislocations have strain field associated with them

 Dislocation-point defect interaction
▪ Vacancies like to accumulate at the compressive strain field of the dislocation

▪ Similarly, solute atoms depending on their size like to accumulate around dislocation core

▪ This atmosphere of solute atoms around dislocation put a drag force

▪ Since dislocation has to overcome the drag force for the movement, strength increases

▪ If the applied stress is large enough, it may help dislocation to break free

❑ Increased solute concentration leads to an increased hardening. However, this fact has to be weighed in the
backdrop of solubility of the solute. Carbon in BCC Fe has very little solubility (~0.008 wt.%) and hence the approach
of pure solid solution strengthening to harden a material can have a limited scope.
Yield point phenomenon

Low carbon steel shows a localized heterogeneous transition

from elastic to plastic deformation

- The load after upper yield point suddenly drops to approximately

constant value (lower yield point) and then rises with further strain

- The elongation which occurs at constant load is called ‘yield point

elongation’ which is heterogeneous deformation

- Luder’s bands are formed at approx. 450 and propagate over

the specimen
Yield point phenomenon

• The upper yield point is associated with small amounts of interstitial impurities (Cottrell atmosphere).

• The solute items lock the dislocations and increase the initial yield stress (upper yield point).

• When the dislocations is pulled free from the solute items, slip can occur at lower stress – lower yield point.

• The magnitude of the yield point depends on the concentration of solute items and interaction energy.
Strain hardening
❑ The stress to cause further plastic deformation (flow stress) increases with strain.
❑ Dislocations moving in non-parallel slip planes can intersect with each other → results in an increase
in stress required to cause further plastic deformation.
❑ Dislocations can also be rendered immobile – newly formed dislocation may lie on a plane which is
not close packed
Strain hardening

Cold working generates dislocations – dislocation density increases. Higher density of dislocations
impedes their motion due to interactions of dislocation strain fields.

Hence the strength increases according to the relation :

σ0 = σi + αGbρ1/2

ρ is the dislocation density, b - Burger vector, G-shear modulus

and α is a constant.

The ductility decreases after cold working.

Strain hardening

n – strain hardening exponent – measures the ability of the material to harden

Materials that have higher ‘n’ values have better formability than those with low ‘n’ values.

Dislocation density

▪ Total dislocation length per unit volume of material

▪ The dislocation density typically determines the strength of a material

• Metals (carefully solidified): 103 m‐2

• Metals (heavily deformed): 109‐1010 m‐2
• Metals (heat treated): 105‐106 m‐2
Strain hardening during metalworking

Forging Rolling

Wire drawing
Extrusion
Influence of cold working on mechanical properties
Grain size strengthening

❑ Studies across many materials has shown that on decreasing the grain size the yield strength of the
material increases. The precise formula for this relation is the famous Hall-Petch relation.
❑ The usual mechanism suggested for this behaviour is the dislocation ‘pile-up’ mechanism’.

▪ y → Yield stress [N/m2]

k ▪ i → Stress to move a dislocation in single crystal [N/m2]
 y =i + ▪ k → Locking parameter [N/m3/2]
d (measure of the relative hardening contribution of grain boundaries)

Hall-Petch Relation ▪ d → Grain diameter [m]

Grain size is related to the ASTM grain size number Hall-Petch constants
by the following formula Material i [MPa] k [MPa m1/2]
645 ▪ d → Grain diameter in meters Cu 25 0.11
d= ▪ n → ASTM grain size number
(2n−1 )1010 Ti 80 0.40
▪ N → number of grains per square
N = 2( n−1) inch area at 100X Mild steel 70 0.74
magnification Ni3Al 300 1.70
Precipitate strengthening

❑ Precipitates may be coherent, semi-coherent or incoherent. Coherent (& semi-coherent) precipitates are
associated with coherency stresses.
❑ Dislocations will shear through coherent and semi-coherent precipitates but they cannot glide through
incoherent precipitates.
❑ Inclusions behave similar to incoherent precipitates in this regard (precipitates are part of the system,
whilst inclusions are external to the alloy system).
❑ A pinned dislocation (at a precipitate) has to either climb over it (which becomes favourable at high
temperatures) or has to bow around it.

Glide through the precipitate If the precipitate is coherent with the matrix

Dislocation

Get pinned by the precipitate

Precipitate strengthening

• The degree of strengthening from non-coherent precipitates depends on the

distribution of particles in the ductile matrix.

• Important parameters are :

- Shape of particles
- Volume fraction of particles
- Average diameter
- Mean interparticle spacing

These parameters are interdependent.

Pinning effect of precipitates (Orowan bowing mechanism)

❑ Dislocations can bow around widely separated second-phase particles. In this process they leave dislocation
loops around the particles, thus leading to an increase in dislocation density. This is known as ‘Orowan bowing
mechanism’.
❑ The next dislocation arriving feels a repulsion from the dislocation loop and hence the stress required to drive
further dislocations increases. Additionally, the effective separation distance (through which the dislocation has
to bow) reduces from ‘d’ to ‘d1’.
Orowan bowing mechanism

• Yield stress is determined by the shear stress required to bow a dislocation line between the particles

𝐺𝑏
• Shear stress to bend dislocation to a radius: τ0 =
2𝑅

• At critical curvature when semicircle is formed, particle spacing D = 2R

• Stress required to force the dislocation through the precipitates is given by :

𝐺𝑏
τ0 =
𝐷