Deformation twinning in zircaloy 2

Abstract

Fully recrystallised zircaloy 2 samples were subjected to different degrees of uniaxial compression. Grains of high Taylor factors showed {1012}〈1011〉 deformation twins, noticeable up to 13–16% compression. Twinning strongly affected the crystallographic texture and also brought in clear differences in stored energy and residual stress between the suspected parent and product grains/orientations of twinning. At later stages of deformation, where presence of twinning was insignificant, aforementioned heterogeneity was further supplemented by heterogeneity in microstructure – clear presence of fragmenting and non-fragmenting grains. Direct observations on twin fraction, twin deviation and twin continuity had shown an apparent peak in twinning by ∼7·5% compression, an observation explainable through a simple model of twin decay by in grain misorientation development.