Authors: Y Dong T Nogaret WA Curtin
Publish Date: 2010/06/08
Volume: 41, Issue: 8, Pages: 1954-1960
Abstract
Strengthening of dislocations by multiple obstacle types occurs in many engineering alloys Theories have rationalized two different scaling laws for the total strength tau talpha = tau 1alpha + tau 2alpha with α = 1 or 2 where τ 1 and τ 2 are the strengths of the two individual obstacle types Simulations have clearly demonstrated α = 2 while “friction” strengthening must correspond to α = 1 Here linetension simulations of dislocation glide through two types of point obstacles are performed to examine the friction limit One obstacle type is weak critical angle approaching 180 deg but with very high density approximately corresponding to solute strengthening and the second obstacle type is stronger smaller critical angle but with lower density approximately corresponding to forest or precipitate strengthening Additive strengthening α = 1 is obtained when the densities of the two obstacle types differ by more than a factor of ~67 while a transition to α = 2 occurs with increasing density of the second obstacle These simulations confirm the longheld metallurgical wisdom regarding additivity of solute or friction strengthening with other strengthening mechanisms and also demonstrate that apparent intermediate scaling laws with 1 α 2 can arise for a range of relative obstacle densities Investigation of several literature experimental studies shows some agreement with the model here but quantitative comparisons remain difficultThe authors acknowledge support of this work by the NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center on “Micro and Nanomechanics of Materials” at Brown University DMR0520651 and by the General Motors/Brown Collaborative Research Lab on Computational Materials Modeling
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