Bauschinger Effect

The Bauschinger effect refers to a property of materials where the material's stress/strain characteristics
change as a result of the microscopic stress distribution of the material. For example, an increase in
tensile yield strength occurs at the expense of compressive yield strength. The effect is named after
German engineer Johann Bauschinger.

While more tensile cold working increases the tensile yield strength, the local initial compressive yield
strength after tensile cold working is actually reduced. The greater the tensile cold working, the lower
the compressive yield strength.
It is a general phenomenon found in most polycrystalline metals. Based on the cold work structure, two
types of mechanisms are generally used to explain the Bauschinger effect:

1. Local back stresses may be present in the material, which assist the movement
of dislocations in the reverse direction. The pile-up of dislocations at grain boundaries
and Orowan loops around strong precipitates are two main sources of these back stresses.

2. When the strain direction is reversed, dislocations of the opposite sign can be produced
from the same source that produced the slip-causing dislocations in the initial direction.
Dislocations with opposite signs can attract and annihilate each other. Since strain
hardening is related to an increased dislocation density, reducing the number of
dislocations reduces strength.

The net result is that the yield strength for strain in the opposite direction is less than it would be if the
strain had continued in the initial direction.

Mechanism of action

Severe unidirectional cold working results in accumulation of dislocation at barriers to dislocation

movement. When stresses are applied in the reverse direction, the dislocations are now aided by the
back stresses that were present at the dislocation barriers previously and also because the back stresses
at the dislocation barriers in the back are not likely to be strong compared to the previous case. Hence
the dislocations glide easily, resulting in lower yield stress for plastic deformation for reversed direction
of loading

Consequence of Bauschinger effect

Metal forming operations result in situations exposing the metal workpiece to stresses of reversed sign.
The Bauschinger effect contributes to work softening of the workpiece, for example in straightening
of drawn bars or rolled sheets, where rollers subject the workpiece to alternate bending stresses,
thereby reducing the yield strength and enabling greater cold drawability of the workpiece.