Dislocations

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Dislocations, Plastic Deformation, and

Mechanisms of Strengthening

• Callister* – sections 7.10-7.13, and 8.14-

8.17 (including 8.16W)
• Callister* – sections 4.1-4.5, 7.1-7.6, 7.8-7.9

• First half of Assignment #3

– Problems 7.21, 7.22, 7.26, 7.31, 7.34, 7.36,
7.38, 7.D5

* 6th edition
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 Basic Questions
• How does permanent deformation occur?
• Why do samples work harden?
• How do we store energy in a crystal?
• Why does the sample recrystallize?

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Plastic Deformation at the Atomic Level

• When a polished metal

surface is plastically
deformed, “slip lines”
appear on the surface
• These slip lines indicate
that atoms are shearing
across each other
• This shear occurs on
specific atomic planes

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 Slip in a Single Crystal
• The orientation of the
crystal was chosen
such that slip would
occur.

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Slip in an Aluminum Single Crystal

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 Slip in Polycrystalline Materials
• Because of random
crystallographic orientations
of the grains
– Direction of slip varies from
grain to grain
– For each grain, dislocation
motion occurs along the slip
system that has the most
favourable orientation
Copper sample

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Slip Planes
• For example, in an FCC
unit cell
– Slip occurs on the (111)
plane (ABDEFC)
– There are three <110> slip
directions
• This is called the
{111}<110> slip system

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 Orientation of Slip Planes
The ‘resolved’ shear
stress on a given slip
plane leads to slip and
thus plastic deformation

τ R = σ cos ϕ cos λ
τR – resolved shear stress
σ – applied stress
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Slip Systems for Different Crystal

Structures

• FCC and BCC crystal structures have a relatively large number of slip
systems, so they are quite ductile. Conversely, HCP structures can be
quite brittle.
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 The stress needed for plastic deformation

• To simultaneously break all the atomic bonds on a slip

plane requires a very high stress
E For steel, E=210 GPa
σ theoretical ≅ So σth ~ 21000 GPa!!
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But in Lab #1,
σy for mild steel ~ 200-300 MPa

σy for piano wire ~ 3000 MPa

This calculation was first
done in the 1930s
WHY SO MUCH LOWER??
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Line Defects (Dislocations) in

Crystal Structures
• “Edge Dislocations”
– Defect in the crystal structure
which results from the presence of
an extra half plane
– This means that significantly
lower stress is required to get slip
– Only one atomic plane must be
moved at at time
• Dislocations were postulated in
1930’s as the mechanism to
explain why yield stresses are
so low
– 20 years before they were
observed experimentally!
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Analogies for Dislocation Motion

Caterpillar analogy

Carpet analogy

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Edge Dislocation - Details

In simple cubic structure
• Burgers vector – defined by = lattice parameter
“magnitude and direction of the
lattice distortion associated with
a dislocation”
– Equivalent to the unit of slip
caused by the motion of a
dislocation from one side of
the crystal to the other
– For an edge dislocation, the
Burgers vector is perpendicular
to the dislocation line; the
combination of these two
define the “slip plane”
– An edge dislocation moves in a
direction parallel to the shear
stress and the Burgers vector

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 Screw Dislocations
• The Burgers vector is
parallel to the dislocation
line
– No specific slip plane is
defined
• A screw dislocation
moves in a direction
perpendicular to the
applied shear stress

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Seeing Dislocations
Titanium alloy
• Dislocations can be observed
in a transmission electron
microscope
–First seen in 1950s

• Dislocations are not usually

present as straight lines, but
usually have complicated
shapes
• Generally ‘mixed’
dislocations
~ 1 µm
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 Disruption in a Crystal
• The disruption of the crystal by the
dislocation causes elastic stress and
strain fields around the dislocation
– Elastic energy is associated with stress
fields
• Edge dislocations have tensile stresses
below the half plane and compressive
stresses above the half plane
• Screw dislocations have shear stress
fields around them

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General Characteristics
• Dislocations cannot end within a crystal or grain, but only at grain
boundaries or at a free surface
• In an annealed (not strain-hardened) material, there will be 1010 metres
of dislocation line in 1 cubic metre of material
– Alternatively, think of this as: in 1 cm3, there are 10 km of dislocation
lines!
– This is impressive, but it still means that 99.999% of the atoms are in
perfect position
• We define the dislocation density ρ as:

ρ= Total length of dislocation line

Units are m/m3
volume

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 Cold Working (Strain Hardening)

• For plastic deformation to occur,

dislocations must move
• Dislocations interact with each other
on the same slip plane or on other
parallel or non-parallel slip planes to
make motion more difficult
– It becomes increasingly more difficult for
the dislocations to move because of the
interaction between themselves
– The stress to continue deformation must
rise, i.e. work hardening

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Cold Working (Strain Hardening)

• New dislocations are created in the

crystal so that deformation may
ρ = 105 km/cm3
continue
– Dislocation density increases
– Stress increases i.e. strain hardening

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 Cold Working (cont.)
• Internal energy = energy per unit
length of dislocation multiplied by
ρ = 105 km/cm3
the dislocation density
• This increase in the internal energy is
the driving force for recrystallization
• Dislocations are removed from the
crystal during recrystallization
• Annealed material
– ρ = 1010 m/m3
• Cold worked material
– ρ = 1014 m/m3
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Recrystallization
New “strain free” (i.e. dislocation free) grains
nucleate at grain boundaries

Deformed grains
ρ = 105 km/cm3

The recrystallized grains are much softer (lower yield

strength) because they have a lower dislocation density
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