UNIVERSITI TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN (UTAR)

Dislocation &
Strengthening Mechanisms

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 Outline

• Dislocation

• Mechanisms of Strengthening

• Recovery, Recrystallization & Grain

Growth

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Dislocation

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 Edge Dislocations Motion
Burgers vector

Caterpillar Movement
• An edge dislocation moves in response to a shear stress applied in a
direction perpendicular to its line
• Cubic & hexagonal metals - plastic deformation by plastic shear or slip
where one plane of atoms slides over adjacent plane by defect motion
(dislocations).
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 Screw Dislocations Motion
The motion of a screw dislocation is also a result of
shear stress, but the defect line movement is
perpendicular to direction of the stress and the atom
displacement, rather than parallel.

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Dislocation Motion

Edge dislocation
Dislocation line is parallel
to the stress direction

Screw dislocation

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 Slip and Dislocation Density
• Plastic deformation as the result of dislocation
motion or the shear displacement of two
adjacent planes of atoms is called slip.
Plastic Deformation
Plastic Deformation

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 Slip and Dislocation Density

• The crystallographic plane along which the

dislocation line traverses is the slip plane.

Slip Plane

The atom above experiencing

compressive force while the atom
below slip plane is experience tensile
force. This is plastic deformation.

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 Slip and Dislocation Density

103 mm-2 : Carefully solidified metal

105 to 106 mm-2 : Heat treating of a deformed metal

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 Strain Field of Dislocation
•Atomic lattice distortion exists around the dislocation line because of the
presence of the extra half-plane of atoms
•Atoms immediately above and adjacent to the
dislocation line are experiencing a compressive
strain relative to atoms positioned in the perfect
crystal and far remove from the dislocation

Dislocation Line

Atoms immediately below and adjacent to the

dislocation line sustain an imposed tensile strain

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Strain Field of Dislocation

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Strain Field of Dislocation

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Strain Field of Dislocation

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Mechanisms of Strengthening

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 Mechanisms of Strengthening

The major strengthening mechanisms

for single-phase metals:
•grain size reduction

•solid-solution alloying
•strain hardening

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Grain Size Reduction

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 Grain Size Reduction
• The size of the grains influences mechanical properties
• Adjacent grains have different crystallographic orientations and a
common grain boundary
• Dislocation motion must take place across the common boundary
from one grain to an adjacent grain during plastic deformation.

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Grain Size Reduction

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 Grain Size Reduction

• It becomes more difficult for the dislocation

passing from one grain into an adjacent one
to change its direction of motion as the
crystallographic misorientation increases.

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Grain Size Reduction

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Grain Size Reduction

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 Solid Solution Strengthening

• Strengthening and hardening of metals by

alloying with impurity atoms.

• The impurity atoms go into either substitutional

or interstitial solid solution.

• High purity metals are mostly softer and weaker

than alloys composed of the same base metal.

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Solid Solution Strengthening

• Variation with nickel contents

for copper-nickel alloys,
showing strengthening

• Tensile strength & yield

strength
increase with wt% Ni.
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 Solid Solution Strengthening

• Smaller substitutional • Larger substitutional

impurity impurity

A C

B D

Impurity generates local stress at A Impurity generates local stress at C

and B that opposes dislocation and D that opposes dislocation
motion to the right. motion to the right.

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Solid Solution Strengthening

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Solid Solution Strengthening

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Solid Solution Strengthening

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 Strain Hardening

•Involves the plastic deformation of a metal at room temperature

(Annealing)

•Often utilized commercially to enhance the mechanical

properties of metals during fabrication procedures.

•The effects of strain hardening may be removed by an

annealing heat treatment.

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 Strain Hardening

For metallic only

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 Strain Hardening

• The degree of plastic deformation is expressed

as percent cold work, which is defined as :

Where
A0 = original cross sectional area and
Ad = area after deformation

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 Strain Hardening

Ductility decreases as the yield

strength increases

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Strain Hardening

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Strain Hardening

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 Strain Hardening

• Ti alloy after cold working

• Dislocations entangle with

one another during cold
work.

• Dislocation motion
becomes more difficult.

0.9 m

3434
 Recovery, Recrystallization and Grain Growth

• Plastic deformation of a polycrystalline metal (at

temperature that are low relative to its absolute melting
temperature) produces the following:

- a change in grain shape

- strain hardening
- an increase in dislocation density
- storage of strain energy
• These properties and structures may revert back to the
precold-worked states by appropriate heat treatment
(annealing)
• The restoration to precold-worked states at elevated
temperature involves two different processes : recovery and
recrystallization which may be followed by grain growth.

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Recovery

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 Recovery

Polyganization

Slip plane

Dislocations Grain Boundaries

Figure: Deformed metal crystal shows dislocations piled up on slip
planes. After recovery heat treatment, dislocations move to form
small-angle grain boundaries.

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Recrystallization

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 Recrystallization

• By short-range diffusion, the new grains form as

very small nuclei and grow until they completely
consume the parent material

• Can be used to refine the grain structure and

restore the mechanical properties to their
precold-work values

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 Time, Temperature and Recrystallization

• The degree of recrystallization increases with time.

• The influence of
annealing
temperature on the
tensile strength,
ductility and grain
structure of a brass
alloy during the
various stages of he
processes is shown in
the figure.

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 º
Time, Temperature and Recrystallization

TR
TR = recrystallization
temperature

º
4141
 Recrystallization Temperature

• The temperature at which recrystallization just

reaches completion in 1 hour.

• It is between one-third and one-half of the

absolute melting temperature of a metal or alloy.

• Recrystallization temperature decreases with

increasing purity of the metal.

• It is raised by alloying since the recrystallization

rate decreases.

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Recrystallization Temperature

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 Recrystallization Temperature

• Recrystallization temperature would be lowered if the

percentage of cold work increases as the recrystallization
rate is enhanced.

• Recrystallization temperature approaches a constant or

limiting value at high deformations.

• No recrystallization would take place below 2 % to 20 %

cold work.

• Greater the degree of deformation, smaller are the

recrystallized grains.

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Recrystallization Temperature

The variation of recrystallization

temperature with percent cold work
for iron.
For deformations less than the
critical (about 5%CW),
recrystallization will not occur.

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Grain Growth

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 Grain Growth

• Grain boundary energies are

consequences of irregular bonding of
atoms along the grain boundaries.

• Total boundary energy can be reduced by

decreasing the total boundary area with an
increase in the grain size.

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Boundary Motion and Grain Growth

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Time, Temperature and Grain Growth

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Time, Temperature and Grain Growth

Brass Alloy

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 Case Study: Heat Treatment of Cold-worked Brass

Recrystallization
0.6 mm 0.6 mm

33% cold New crystals

worked nucleate after
brass 3 sec. at 580C.

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 Case Study: Heat Treatment of Cold-worked Brass

Further Recrystallization

0.6 mm 0.6 mm

After 4 After 8
Seconds at 580C Seconds at 580C

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Case Study: Heat Treatment of Cold-worked Brass

Grain Growth

0.6 mm

After 15 min,
580ºC

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Hot Working

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 Examples 1
Compute the tensile strength and ductility (% EL) of a cylindrical copper rod if it is
cold worked such that the diameter is reduced from 15.2 mm to 12.2 mm (0.60 in.
to 0.48 in).

Solution

It is first necessary to determine the percent cold work resulting from deformation.
This is possible using

The tensile strength is read directly from the curve for copper as 340 MPa (50,000
psi). The ductility at 35.6 % CW is about 7% EL.

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Examples 2

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Examples 2

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