Lecture 9

Strengthening
mechanisms-I

Jayant Jain

Assistant Professor,
Department of Applied Mechanics,
IIT Delhi, Hauz Khas, 110016

Lattice defect is caused by introduction of an extra half

plane of atoms
Insertion of extra half plane has perturbed the lattice
Dislocation line is defined as the edge of the half plane

Stress field around dislocation

Compressive stress field at top
half of lattice
Tensile stress field at bottom
half of lattice

How to increase the strength??

There are mainly two strategies to strengthen
the crystal/material:
Completely remove dislocations difficult,
but dislocation free Whiskers (crystals with high
degree of perfection) have been produced
Increase resistance to the motion of
dislocations or put impediments to the motion of
dislocations this can be done in many ways as
listed in the next slide.

Strength vs. Dislocation density

G/2

Strength

0
Dislocation density

Key ways of improving the strength of material

Alloying or Solid solution strengthening
Grain size strengthening

Work hardening
Precipitation hardening

Alloying
Alloys are stronger than pure metals

Have you thought about why they are stronger!!

Solid solution hardening

Foreign atom distort the host lattice and generate the
stress
Substitutional element of
larger and smaller size than
the host atom size
Compressive stress

Tensile stress

Interstitial or substitutional impurities cause lattice

strain and interact with dislocation strain fields
thereby hinder dislocation motion
Impurities diffuse and segregate around dislocation
to find atomic sites more suited to their radii:
Reduces strain energy + anchors dislocation
8

Dislocation-Solute interaction

Smaller and larger substitutional impurities diffuse into

strained regions around dislocations leading to partial
cancellation of impurity-dislocation lattice strains.

Example: Solid solution strengthening

Brass: Strength increase with wt% Zn

1/ 2
Empirical relation: y ~ C
10

Grain size hardening

Grain boundaries are narrow zones where

the atoms are not properly spaced

Grain size hardening

Grain boundary acts as a barrier to slip: discontinuity in slip
plane across the boundary
By decreasing crystal size, we put more barrier in the path
of moving dislocations thereby the strength should increase

12

Grain size hardening

Reducing grain size
means more barrier to
slip
Decreasing grain size
not only increases
strength but it also
increases toughness of
the material

Hall-Petch relation
Hall-Petch equation - The relationship
between yield strength and grain size can be
given as-

where o and ky are constants for a

particular material, d is the average grain
diameter.

Experimental Validation:
Hall-Petch relation
70 Cu - 30 Zn brass alloy

Decreasing grain size