596 research outputs found
Yielding and irreversible deformation below the microscale: Surface effects and non-mean-field plastic avalanches
Nanoindentation techniques recently developed to measure the mechanical
response of crystals under external loading conditions reveal new phenomena
upon decreasing sample size below the microscale. At small length scales,
material resistance to irreversible deformation depends on sample morphology.
Here we study the mechanisms of yield and plastic flow in inherently small
crystals under uniaxial compression. Discrete structural rearrangements emerge
as series of abrupt discontinuities in stress-strain curves. We obtain the
theoretical dependence of the yield stress on system size and geometry and
elucidate the statistical properties of plastic deformation at such scales. Our
results show that the absence of dislocation storage leads to crucial effects
on the statistics of plastic events, ultimately affecting the universal scaling
behavior observed at larger scales.Comment: Supporting Videos available at
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.002041
High-fidelity 3D microstructural characterization of ZrB2 during hot-pressing (Invited)
Standard ultra-high temperature ceramic (UHTC) manufacturing results in components with large differences in properties due to variability in microstructural “critical flaw” distributions. Critical flaws can be any irregularity in a component, such as a secondary phase, cracks, pores, etc. This is problematic when designing reproducible UHTC components. The goal of this project is to understand how these critical flaws evolve during hot pressing of ZrB2 (a UHTC) by examining them in 3D. This study incorporates 3D imaging such as (i) preliminary in-situ high-temperature pressureless sintering X-ray µ-CT, (ii) ex-situ X-ray µ-CT, and (iii) 3D electron imaging and backscattered diffraction data collected at different stages of densification. 3D microstructure statistics along with unique observations of individual pore and secondary phase evolution will be presented. This data is brought together to give a holistic view of the densification of ZrB2 during hot pressing at multiple length scales. This data will be incorporated into a process-structure-property (PSP) database for statistical modeling to reduce uncertainty during ZrB2 processing
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ESTIMATING THE STRENGTH OF SINGLE-ENDED DISLOCATION SOURCES IN MICROMETER-SIZED SINGLE CRYSTALS
A recent study indicated that the behavior of single-ended dislocation sources contributes to the flow strength of micrometer-scale crystals. In this study 3D discrete dislocation dynamics simulations of micrometer-sized volumes are used to calculate the effects of anisotropy of dislocation line tension (increasing Poisson's ratio, {nu}) on the strength of single-ended dislocation sources and, to compare them with the strength of double-ended sources of equal length. This is done by directly modeling their plastic response within a 1 micron cubed FCC Ni single crystal using DDS. In general, double-ended sources are stronger than single-ended sources of an equal length and exhibit no significant effects from truncating the long-range elastic fields at this scale. The double-ended source strength increases with Poisson ratio ({nu}), exhibiting an increase of about 50% at u = 0.38 (value for Ni) as compared to the value at {nu} = 0. Independent of dislocation line direction, for {nu} greater than 0.20, the strengths of single-ended sources depend upon the sense of the stress applied. The value for {alpha}, in the expression for strength, {tau} = {alpha}(L){micro}b/L is shown to vary from 0.4 to 0.84 depending upon the character of the dislocation and the direction of operation of the source at {nu} corresponding to that of Ni, 0.38 and a length of 933b. By varying the lengths of the sources from 933b to 233b, it was shown that the scaling of the strength of single-ended and double-ended sources with their length both follow a ln(L/b)/(L/b) dependence. Surface image stresses are shown to have little effect on the critical stress of single-ended sources at a length of {approx}250b or greater. The relationship between these findings and a recent statistical model for the hardening of small volumes is also discussed
A Uni-Axial Nano-Displacement Micro-Tensile Test of Individual Constituents from Bulk Material
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An Apparatus for Performing Microtensile Tests at Elevated Temperatures inside a Scanning Electron Microscope
In this paper, we introduce an apparatus to perform microtensile tests at elevated temperatures inside a scanning electron microscope. The apparatus has a stroke of 250 μm with a displacement resolution of 10 nm and a load resolution of 9.7 μN. Measurements at elevated temperatures are performed through use of two silicon-based micromachined heaters that support the sample. Each heater consists of a tungsten heating element that also serves as a temperature gauge. To demonstrate the testing capabilities, tensile tests were performed on submicron Cu films at various temperatures up to 430 °C. Stress–strain curves show a significant decrease in yield strength and initial slope for the samples tested at elevated temperature, which we attribute to diffusion-facilitated grain boundary sliding and dislocation climb.Engineering and Applied Science
Single-shot full strain tensor determination with microbeam X-ray Laue diffraction and a two-dimensional energy-dispersive detector
Wall-thickness-dependent strength of nanotubular ZnO
We fabricate nanotubular ZnO with wall thickness of 45, 92, 123 nm using nanoporous gold (np-Au) with ligament diameter at necks of 1.43 mu m as sacrificial template. Through micro-tensile and micro-compressive testing of nanotubular ZnO structures, we find that the exponent m in (sigma) over bar proportional to (rho) over bar (m), where (sigma) over bar is the relative strength and (rho) over bar is the relative density, for tension is 1.09 and for compression is 0.63. Both exponents are lower than the value of 1.5 in the Gibson-Ashby model that describes the relation between relative strength and relative density where the strength of constituent material is independent of external size, which indicates that strength of constituent ZnO increases as wall thickness decreases. We find, based on hole-nanoindentation and glazing incidence X-ray diffraction, that this wall-thickness-dependent strength of nanotubular ZnO is not caused by strengthening of constituent ZnO by size reduction at the nanoscale. Finite element analysis suggests that the wall-thickness-dependent strength of nanotubular ZnO originates from nanotubular structures formed on ligaments of np-Au
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