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A temperature and rate-dependent crystal plasticity framework has been used to examine the temperature sensitivity of stress relaxation, creep and load shedding in model Ti-6Al polycrystal behaviour under dwell fatigue conditions. A temperature close to 120°C is found to lead to the strongest stress redistribution and load shedding, resulting from the coupling between crystallographic slip rate and slip system dislocation hardening. For temperatures in excess of about 230°C, grain-level load shedding from soft to hard grains diminishes because of the more rapid stress relaxation, leading ultimately to the diminution of the load shedding and hence, it is argued, the elimination of the dwell debit. Under conditions of cyclic stress dwell, at temperatures between 20°C and 230°C for which load shedding occurs, the rate-dependent accumulation of local slip by ratcheting is shown to lead to the progressive cycle-by-cycle redistribution of stress from soft to hard grains. This phenomenon is termed cyclic load shedding since it also depends on the material's creep response, but develops over and above the well-known dwell load shedding, thus providing an additional rationale for the incubation of facet nucleation.

This paper investigates the mechanisms of facet nucleation through combining aero-engine manufacturer disc component test data with microstructure-sensitive crystal plasticity finite element (CPFE) models. Full-scale component testing has been carried out in a manner representative of in-service conditions. Elastic FE analyses of discs under these conditions and fully accounting for thermal and residual processing strains have also been carried out. Disc facet nucleation sites have been identified and the local stress states evaluated in order to establish crystal plasticity oligocrystal sub-models. The oligocrystal RVE models provide knowledge of hard-soft grain stresses under dwell loading, and the consequent load shedding in order to provide stresses required for the facet nucleation. The disc component facet observations together with the crystal plasticity sub-model oligocrystal approach provide persuasive evidence that a hard-soft grain combination is required for facet formation, that the remote stress state influences the resolved shear stress on the soft grain initiating slip (with tensile uniaxial stress state more damaging than a tension-tension biaxial stress state), and that the load shedding which results is essential in pushing up the hard-grain basal stress to nucleate facets

High resolution EBSD studies on a deformed copper polycrystal have been carried out to quantify the microstructural residual stress distributions, and those of stress state including triaxiality of importance in defect nucleation studies. Crystal plasticity analysis of a representative, similarly textured, model polycrystal has been carried out showing that the experimental distributions of microstructural residual stress components, effective stress, hydrostatic stress and stress triaxiality are well captured.The crystal model enables point-wise microstructural Schmid factors to be calculated both globally (ie with respect to the macroscopic remote loading) and locally from full knowledge of the grain-level stress state. Significant differences are demonstrated such that global Schmid analysis tends to overestimate slip activity and the frequency of high Schmid factors, indicating that the local microstructural heterogeneity is significant and caution is necessary in interpreting polycrystal behaviour using global Schmid factors. A stored energy criterion for fatigue crack nucleation indicates that preferential sites for fatigue crack nucleation are local to grain boundaries (as opposed to triple junctions), and that hard-soft grain interfaces where high GND densities develop are preferable.

The Sih, Paris and Irwin analytical solution for cracks in anisotropic elastic media has been developed for an hcp Ti single crystal and shown to lead to crack tip normal stresses which are independent of crystal orientation but other stress components which are dependent.Detailed finite element studies confirm that the stress intensity remains independent of crystal orientation but ceases to do so in an edge-cracked bi-crystal.The incorporation of crystallographic slip demonstrates that single-crystal crack tip stresses largely remain independent of crystal orientation but that the plastic zone size and shape depends greatly upon it. Significant differences result in both the magnitude and extent of the plasticity at the crack tip with crystallographic orientation which can be quite different to that predicted using Mises plasticity. For an edge crack terminating in a bi-crystal, the slip fields which result depend upon both crystal mis-orientation and morphology.Keywords: Stress intensity; crystal plasticity; anisotropy; titanium alloys; cold dwell fatigue; crystallographic slip.