Mechanical behaviour of alloys containing stable or evolving heterogeneous arrangements of particles

Abstract

The effect of second phase particles on the deformation behaviour of a particle strengthened (e.g. oxide dispersion strengthened) alloy was studied. Instead of dealing with average characteristics of dislocation glide (such as the average mean free path), a particular distribution of particles in the glide plane was considered. A homogenisation technique based on the Delaunay triangulation was used that is considered to be a better representation of local particle arrangement than the Voronoi tessellation proposed previously. A softening effect of particle clustering was found. The method was also applied to a population of particles whose density decreases during plastic deformation due to Ostwald ripening.