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The effect of pre-compression deformation on the microstructural evolution, mechanical property and deformation behavior of AZ31 magnesium alloy was studied. The alloy was microstructurally characterized with a combination of optical microscopy, electron backscatter diffraction, X-ray diffraction and energy-dispersive spectrometer. The results indicate that average number of twins per grain and dislocation density increases with an increase in compressive pre-deformation level. Stress–strain curves of low pre-strained samples (0%, 1% and 3%) present concave-up features, whereas concave-down shapes are detected for high pre-strained samples (6% and 8%) in uniaxial compression tests. The corresponding underlying deformation mechanism transists from a twin-dominated mechanism to a slip-dominated mechanism. This deformation mechanism transition is related to {10–12} twinning, which leads to grain refinement and crystal orientation change, as well as increased dislocation density. The yield strength linearly increases with increasing equivalent grain size regardless of the deformation mechanisms. Quantitative analysis reveals that the contributions from texture strengthening, twinning/grain boundary strengthening and dislocation strengthening increase as pre-compression level increases. Texture strengthening is the dominant strengthening mechanism for high pre-strained samples.

A CrxCy–NiCr cermet coating was fabricated using the supersonic plasma spray technique, and its effect on the hydrogen embrittlement of 17-4 PH stainless steel was studied through electrochemical hydrogen charging and slow strain rate tensile testing. The index of hydrogen embrittlement susceptibility was calculated, and the results show that the CrxCy–NiCr coating plays a significant role in preventing hydrogen embrittlement cracking. The hydrogen content analysis demonstrates that the CrxCy–NiCr coating enhances the resistance to hydrogen embrittlement by acting as a hydrogen diffusion barrier. This effect is mainly due to the CrxCy ceramics in the cermet coating having a very low hydrogen diffusion rate. In addition, the strength and ductility of the specimen without the coating decrease gradually with increasing hydrogen charging current density. According to the tensile testing results and the fracture surface analysis, the hydrogen embrittlement phenomenon is explained by a mixed mechanism involving hydrogen-enhanced local plasticity and hydrogen-enhanced decohesion.

Magnesium (Mg) reinforced recycled-polystyrene (PS) matrix composites were fabricated through solution blending followed by compaction under different pressures (i.e., 6 MPa, 10 MPa, 60 MPa, and 100 MPa). The hardness of the composites initially increased and then decreased with the increase of the Mg weight fraction from 0 wt.% to 83.3 wt.%. The composite with 80 wt.% Mg exhibited the maximum hardness, which increased by 150% compared with that of PS. For each Mg weight fraction, there was an optimal compaction pressure that led to the highest hardness. Theoretical predictions of the hardness agreed with the experimental values through adjusting the reinforcement efficiency.

Porous magnesium (Mg) samples with various overall porosities (28.4 ± 1.8%, 35.5 ± 2.5%, 45.4 ± 1.9%, and 62.4 ± 2.2%) were processed through powder metallurgy and characterized to study their mechanical properties. Different porosities were obtained by utilizing different mass fractions of space holder camphene. Camphene was removed by sublimation before sintering and contributed to processing porous Mg with high purity and small average pore size. The average pore size increased from 5.2 µm to 15.1 µm with increase of the porosity from 28.4 ± 1.8% to 62.4 ± 2.2%. Compressive strain–stress data showed that the strain hardening rate, yield strength, and ultimate compressive strength decreased with increase of the porosity. The theoretical yield strength of porous Mg obtained using the Gibson–Ashby model agreed with experimental data.

Porous magnesium/carbon nanofiber composites were produced using a powder metallurgic method to study the effect of ball milling time on their microstructure and hardness. Three ball milling times (240 min, 320 min, and 480 min) and two carbon nanofiber concentrations (0.05% and 1%) were utilized in the production of these porous composites. The increase of ball milling time led to the gradual decrease of the average size of magnesium powders from the initial 40 µm to about 26 µm after 480 min of ball milling. The powder size range first increased with the increase of ball milling time from 240 min to 320 min, and then decreased with the further increase of ball milling time to 480 min. Among the three ball milling times, the produced porous composites from the powders after 320 min of ball milling have the largest average pore size. With the increase of ball milling time from 240 min to 320 min and then to 480 min, the average Vickers microhardness data first decreased and then increased for Mg-1%C porous composites along the cross-sections parallel to the compact processing direction, increased for the cross-sections perpendicular to the compact processing direction for Mg-1%C porous composites, first increased and then decreased for the cross-sections parallel to the compact processing direction for Mg-0.05%C porous composites, and slightly decreased for the cross-sections perpendicular to the compact processing direction for Mg-0.05%C porous composites.

Porous magnesium/carbon nanotube (Mg/CNT) composites with various CNT concentrations (0.05 and 1 wt%) and overall porosities (20, 30, and 40 %) were synthesized by a powder metallurgical method and characterized to study their microstructure and yield strengths. The introduction of pores leads to the reduction of material strength. Thus, it is attractive to add reinforcement phase to produce porous composites and improve yield strength. The porous Mg/CNT composites with low overall porosity have smaller average pore size than the porous Mg/CNT composites with high overall porosity. The compression testing results showed that the average yield strength is about one to four times of the yield strength of sand-cast Mg. Yield strength of porous Mg–0.05 wt%CNT composites is not significantly different from that of porous Mg–1 wt%CNT composites, when both composites have the same overall porosity. The average yield strength along the in-plane direction is larger than that along the normal direction for each type of porous Mg/CNT composite. The Gibson and Ashby model was used to estimate yield strength and the results show that the theoretical estimations of yield strength agree well with the experimental yield strength values for the porous composites with high overall porosity (i.e., 30 or 40 %), while the estimations are lower than the experimental data for the porous composites with low overall porosity (i.e., 20 %).

Four topics associated with constitutive equation descriptions of rate-dependent metal plastic deformation behavior are reviewed in honor of previous research accomplished on the same issues by Professor Marc Meyers along with colleagues and students, as follow: (1) increasing strength levels attributed to thermally activated dislocation migration at higher loading rates; (2) inhomogeneous adiabatic shear banding; (3) controlling mechanisms of deformation in shock as compared with shock-less isentropic compression experiments and (4) Hall–Petch-based grain size-dependent strain rate sensitivities exhibited by nanopolycrystalline materials. Experimental results are reviewed on the topics for a wide range of metals.

A magnesium single crystal sample with a near \( 1 1 {\bar{{2}}{0}} \) orientation was tested at room temperature under compression–compression cyclic loading, and the microstructure was characterized to disclose the involved deformation mechanisms. No plastic deformation region appeared on the stress–strain curve during the cyclic loading. The stress–strain curve stabilized at the first cycle, the strain range for each cycle fluctuated slightly around a constant value, and the mean strain for each cycle was in a narrow range from 0.0846 to 0.0863 during the whole test. The ratcheting strain rate decreased exponentially from ~0.0003, and reached a relatively small and stable value of about zero. The observed deformation mechanisms were prismatic slip, compression twinning, and tension twinning. The prismatic dislocation slip roughened the cylindrical sample surface by forming extrusions and intrusions, and small cracks were also observed on the surface.

Transformation superplastic forming is an attractive alternative forming technique to microstructural superplastic forming, since it requires no special microstructures and, therefore, eliminates the limitation of superplastic forming capability to only expensive materials with stable high-temperature fine grains. Transformation superplasticity occurs through biasing the internal stress produced from an allotropic phase transformation by a small external stress. In this work, finite element modeling was implemented to study the transformation superplastic forming of domes from flat circular thin plate samples. The evolution and distribution of stress, strain, and dome thickness was analyzed in detail. The thickness distributions in the formed domes were compared with the theoretical predictions of two models, which assume different stress states in the domes. The appropriate stress state was identified through this comparison. Different gas pressure amplitudes were applied during forming to investigate the effect on the formed-dome apex height, when the forming time was fixed.

Ti-6Al-4V lattice block structure panels were fabricated using an aerospace-quality investment casting process. Testing in compression, bending, and impact show that high strength, ductility, and energy absorption are achieved for both individual struts and full panels, despite the intricacies involved with casting fine struts (1.6 or 3.2 mm in diameter) from a highly reactive, poor-fluidity liquid titanium alloy. The panel stress-strain curve calculated by finite-element modeling correlates well with experimental results, indicating that the occasional defects, which are common to aerospace grade castings and may be present in the struts and nodes, have little detrimental effect on the overall panel compressive properties.

Samples of unalloyed titanium and Ti-6Al-4V with a cast, coarse-grain structure were subjected to simultaneous mechanical loading and thermal cycling about their transformation range to assess their capability for transformation superplasticity. Under uniaxial tensile loading, high elongations to failure (511 pct for titanium, and 265 pct for Ti-6Al-4V) and an average strain-rate sensitivity exponent of unity are observed. Samples previously deformed superplastically to a strain of 100 pct show no significant degradation in room-temperature mechanical properties as compared to the undeformed state. Biaxial dome bulging tests confirm that transformation superplasticity is activated under thermal cycling and faster than creep deformation. The cast, coarse-grained titanium and Ti-6Al-4V have similar transformation-superplasticity characteristics as wrought or powder-metallurgy materials with finer grains. This may enable superplastic forming of titanium objects directly after the casting step, thus bypassing the complicated and costly thermomechanical processing steps needed to achieve fine-grain superplasticity.

A closed-form solution is presented for the stress field in an infinite, homogeneous, isotropic elastic material, due to a uniform transformation strain in a cuboidal region. The dislocation-based method used here offers an alternate approach and furnishes the stress state directly, as compared to the displacement gradient furnished by Chiu [2]. Both solutions are shown to produce numerically equivalent values of stress. The present results are available as a numerical (MathCad) program to compute the stress state for abitrary cuboidal geometries

Superplastic forming is an appealing and affordable technique for manufacturing titanium-based structural parts. In this work, circular samples with uniform initial thickness were formed superplastically using finite element modeling (FEM) and the formed domes are analyzed to investigate their thickness distributions. The results indicate that the dome thickness is not uniform and decreases from the apex to the periphery for each formed dome. The increase of the formed dome height results in the increased thinning of the samples, and the increase of the ratio between the thickness at the dome apex and that at the dome periphery. The predicted thickness distribution based on the Enikeev and Kruglov (E-K) model has a good agreement with the FEM result for the formed domes with a large apex height, while it deviates from the FEM result for the formed domes with a small apex height. A possible reason is the neglecting of the body force from the sample weight in the analytical E-K model. The obtained knowledge will help guide the initial thickness design for the plate samples to realize the expected final thickness distributions.

The peak/plateau strength of multilayer thin films is analyzed in terms of the stress to bow out a dislocation loop from an interface. Comparison of approximate analytic models to experimental data suggests that the bow out is “constrained” by nearby interfaces, at least for e-NbN/Mo and e-Ni/Cu films. Estimates of the interfacial pinning distance to form the bow out are ˜20b for e-NbN/Mo and ˜70b for e-Ni/Cu around peak/plateau strength (b is the magnitude of Burgers vector).

This paper examines the effect of plastic deformation on the strength and transformation heat and temperatures of the superelastic Nitinol samples. Two types of compression tests and differential scanning calorimetry tests were conducted. The first type of compression test deformed the samples to final fracture, and the second type included two loading –unloading cycles with or without plastic deformation. The mechanically tested samples were analyzed using differential scanning calorimetry.

In nanostructured metallic multilayers, hardness and strength are greatly enhanced compared to their microstructured counterparts. As layer thickness is decreased, three different regions are frequently observed: the first region shows Hall-Petch behavior; the second region shows an even greater dependence on layer thickness; and the third region exhibits a plateau or softening of hardness and strength. The second and third regions are studied using our discrete dislocation simulation method. This method includes the effects of stress due to lattice mismatch, misfit dislocation substructure, and applied stress on multilayer strength. To do so, we study the propagation of existing threading and interfacial dislocations as the applied stress is increased to the macroyield point. Our results show that in region 2, dislocation propagation is confined to individual layers initially. This “confined layer slip” builds up interfacial content and redistributes stress so that ultimately, the structure can no longer confine slip. The associated macroyield stress in this region depends strongly on layer thickness. In region 3, layers are so thin that confined layer slip is not possible and the macroyield stress reaches a plateau that is independent of layer thickness.

Nanoscale polycrystalline metals typically exhibit increasing hardness with decreasing grain size down to a critical value on the order of 5 to 30 nm. Below this, a plateau or decrease is often observed. Similar observations are made for nanoscale multilayer thin films. There, TEM observations and modeling suggest that the hardness peak may be associated with the inability of interfaces to contain dislocations within individual nanoscale layers. This manuscript pursues the same concept for nanoscale polycrystalline metals via an analytic study of dislocation nucleation and motion within a regular 2D hexagonal array of grains. The model predicts a hardness peak and loss of dislocation confinement in the 5 to 30 nm grain size regime, but only if the nature of dislocation interaction with grain boundaries changes in the nanoscale regime.