Materials 2

Lecture 3

Dr Philip Harrison
Contents of Lecture 3

• Atomic Strengthening Mechanisms in Metals and

Alloys (continued)

- Precipitation strengthening
- Work (or strain) hardening - forest of dislocations
- Grain Boundary hardening

• Relating tensile strength to shear strength

 Strengthening Metals – Obstacles within the Crystal
Lattice
• Can put obstacles in the slip plane to hinder motion of dislocation

Each obstacle provides a

pinning force, hindering
motion of dislocation
The shear stress needs
to push the dislocation
past the obstacles
Dispersion and Precipitation Strengthening
• Dispersions involve mixing hard tiny particles into a molten metal,
e.g. SiC particles in molten Al

• Alternatively, precipitates can be created via heat treatment of

certain alloys – more on this in D&M2!

• Dislocations can’t travel through the particles (too strong), so they

go around them

• This distorts and stretches the dislocation line (like stretching an

elastic band)
Elastic Energy in Dislocations
• Atoms near dislocations are displaced from their low-energy
positions

• In order to minimise the potential energy in the distorted lattice, the

dislocation tries to minimise it’s length, L1

• The dislocation line behaves as if it

had a line tension, T, like an elastic
band

• It can be shown (we just use the result

L1 here) that:
Stress Increase due to Dispersion/Precipitation
Strengthening
• Consider the stretching of the dislocation line

• It is stretched by the shear force pushing the dislocation between

the particles

• Consider the balance of forces at the mid-stage in this process

• The dislocation provides the greatest

resistance when it’s radius of
curvature = L/2

• At that point,

• Thus, , then use result for T on

previous slide, to find:
 Dispersion Strengthening: Example
A metal matrix composite consists of an aluminium matrix phase
reinforced with hard particles of SiC with a mean spacing of 4
microns. The increase in shear strength due to this dispersion
strengthening is 50MPa. Calculate the size of the dispersion
strengthening on the shear strength if the concentration of the
particles is increased such that the inter-particle spacing decreases to
3 microns.

Answer

• Use thus

• MPa = 66.7 MPa

Work Hardening
• Recall the stress-strain curve for low carbon steel

• If we induce plastic deformation, release the stress then load

again, the yield stress will increase!

𝜎 𝑦 Work
𝜎 𝑦 Hardening
Stress

Strain
Work hardening
Work hardening is due to increase in number
Stress (MPa) of dislocations generated by plastic
Plastic work deformation. Too many makes it difficult for
hardening them to move
X
Even in undeformed ductile metal, dislocation
density, , is about 1010 m/m3, that’s about
Elastic
10km of dislocations in the volume of a sugar
Strain (mm/mm) ~ 0.2 cube!

= 10km

After work hardening,

100,000,000km
increases to >1017 m/m3 ~
100 million km in the
volume of sugar cube!!
=
Forrest of Dislocations
• Instead of an ordered plane of atoms (slip plane) through which to
move, the slip plane is now penetrated and disrupted by
intersecting dislocations

• Spacing of forest dislocation,

• As ‘our’ dislocation passes through the forest, it shears the

intersecting dislocations, creating a ‘jog’ in each one

• Each jog has a potential energy, thus it takes energy to create

them, making it harder to push our dislocation along
Stress Increase due to Forrest of Dislocations
• Each jog is a tiny segment of dislocation of length b

• Each exerts a pinning force,

• Use the results from the previous slides to determine

• Work hardening can be annoying if you want to shape a metal. By

deforming it you make it stronger and harder to work any further.
It’s possible to reverse the effect by annealing (cooking it!)

More on this topic (heat

treatments) in D&M2!
 Strain Hardening: Example
After a small amount of work hardening, the shear yield stress of a
pure annealed copper, increases from 20 to 30MPa. The work-
hardened specimen contains on average about 1015 m/m3 of
dislocations.

Determine the dislocation density in the metal after work-hardening

the specimen even further such that the shear yield stress increases
to 40MPa.
Answer

MPa (1)

2 MPa (2)

Find x by dividing (2) by (1), to find: x = 4x1015 m/m3

Grain Boundary Hardening
• Almost all metals are polycrystalline (with a different
crystallographic orientation for each grain)

• Grain size, D, usually lies between 10-100 microns

• Because slip planes in different grains don’t line up, hinders the
motion of dislocations

• The increase is resistance to plastic deformation is found to scale

with 1/

is the Petch constant, for normal

grain sizes, is quite low
 Grain Boundary Hardening: Example
The Petch constant for various metal alloys is given in Table 1.

Determine the change in the contribution

the shear yield strength of titanium if the
grain size halves from 100 to 50 microns.

Answer
MPa

MPa

Thus, increase = 56.7-40=16.7MPa

Summation of Strengthening Mechanisms
• All these shear strengthening mechanisms can be added together

𝜏 𝑦 =𝜏 𝑖 +𝜏 𝑠𝑠 +𝜏 𝑝𝑝𝑡 +𝜏 𝑤h +𝜏 𝑔𝑏
• Here is the intrinsic shear strength and the rest of the symbols
were discussed previously (look back through the slides to recall
them!)

• Ceramic materials and diamond have a large intrinsic strength,

(no need to harden any further). In contrast, metals usually need
to be strengthened using these various mechanisms

• The equation above describes the yield strength of a single

crystal loaded in shear but we need to relate this to the yield
strength of a polycrystalline material loaded in tension – (we
usually test materials in tension not shear)
Determine Tensile Strength from Shear Strength I
• Require two steps: (1) resolve tensile stress to determine shear stress on
a given plane in a specimen, exerted by the tensile stress (2) consider
influence of random orientation of crystals on tensile strength

• Step 1: Resolve stress on a plane

Force=F
Area=A Force parallel to plane is

F.sinϴ The force acts on area,

F
F.cosϴ ϴ Thus,

ϴ Note that, (the tensile stress)

Thus,
Determine Tensile Strength from Shear Strength II
• Can implement in a spreadsheet (hint: do this before the next
Moodle quiz!)
• Example: If = 1 MPa, find the shear stress acting on a plane as a
function of the plane’s angular orientation
• The maximum shear stress occurs on the plane orientated at 45o
when

In a polycrystalline
material, grains orientated
with slip planes at 45o will
slip first

Grains orientated with slip

planes NOT at 45o will slip
later – effectively
strengthening the material’s
resistance to tensile loads
Determine Tensile Strength from Shear Strength III
• Step 2: The effect of randomly orientated crystallographic
directions in each grain is to make the metal alloy 1.5x stronger
compared to a single crystal orientated at 45o

• Called the Taylor factor, derived by G. Taylor (1886-1975) - you’ll

probably hear his name a lot in engineering, he made important
contributions all over the place, amazing person!

Combining steps 1 & 2, suggests the

tensile strength of a polycrystalline
material is approximately 3x higher than
the shear strength of a single crystal of
the same material, i.e:
Determine Tensile Strength from Shear Strength IV
Example: Aluminium has an intrinsic shear yield strength of about 30
MPa. A manufacturer decides to produce an aluminium alloy that is
strengthened by another 100MPa (in shear) by solid solution
hardening. The alloy is then stretched in a manufacturing process
(e.g. sheet forming) and becomes even stronger, by another 50MPa
(in shear), due to work hardening. The contribution to the shear
strength from grain boundary hardening is about 20MPa.

Determine the tensile strength of the resulting aluminium alloy.

Answer: (30+100+50+20)x3=600MPa
The Downside of Strengthening – Reduction in Ductility
• Consider pure copper, it’s soft and ductile (just )
• Pure copper can be alloyed to produce soft brass (
• Pure copper can be work-hardened (
• Brass can be work-hardened (
• Pure copper can be alloyed and heat treated to produce
precipitation hardened copper-beryllium alloys ()

Increasing strength  generally

leads to a reduction in ductility –
makes the material more brittle 