A study of latent hardening behavior in aluminium single crystals

Abstract

In order to obtain a better understanding or a complete description of plastic properties of polycrystals, especially in polycrystal modelling viewpoint, investigations on latent hardening behavior of single crystals have been performed in a great number. Recently, however, Wu et al. have pointed out that the definition of the yield stress of latent system using the conventional back extrapolation is ambiguous in terms of determining the latent hardening moduli because the initial rapid work-hardening of the transient zone is neglected. They proposed a more precise measure of the yield stress of latent system based on the decrease of the tangent modulus from the linear elastic modulus, and showed that the latent hardening, which would not plus the initial work-hardening of the transient zone, is actually lower than that obtained from the backward extrapolation. Thus, in their opinion, it is considered that the hardening behavior of latent system (such as the directionality, the effects of relative orientation and prestrain) need be newly or further studied in detail. Single crystals of aluminum have been grown with high purity to investigate this behavior.