The dependence of yield strength, uniform elongation, and toughness on grain size in metallic structural materials was discussed. The toughness is defined as the product of yield strength and uniform elongation. The yield strength versus grain size can be well described by the Hall-Petch relation; however, the uniform elongation versus grain size is not well understood yet. A simple model involving the densities of geometrically necessary dislocations and statistically stored dislocations was proposed to estimate the uniform elongation versus grain size. Existing data for low carbon steels and aluminum indicate that, in the grain size less than 1μm, the materials usually exhibit high strength and low uniform elongation and, in the grain size greater than 10μm, the materials usually exhibit low strength and high elongation; in either case the toughness is low. However, in the grain size of several micrometers, the toughness is the highest. It is suggested that we should pay more attention to develop the metallic materials with grain size of several micrometers for structural applications.
The ZK61 alloy rods with different grain sizes and crystallographic texture were successfully fabricated by cyclic extrusion and compression (CEC). Their room-temperature tension & compression yield strength displayed a significant dependence on grain size and texture, essentially attributed to {10-12} twinning. The texture variations were characterized by the angle θ between the c-axis of the grain and the extrusion direction (ED) during the process. The contour map of room-temperature yield strength as a function of grain size and the angle θ was obtained. It showed that both the tension yield strength and the compression yield strength of ZK61 alloy were fully consistent with the Hall-Patch relationship at a certain texture, but the change trends of the tension yield strength and the compression yield strength were completely opposite at the same grain size while texture altered. The friction stresses of different deformation modes calculated based on the texture confirmed the tension yield strength of the CECed ZK61 alloy rods, which was determined by both the basal slip and the tension twinning slip during the tension deformation at room temperature, while the compression yield strength was mainly determined by the basal slip during the compression deformation.
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