Uniform decrease in CSA

What’s going on inside?

Metal structure
Metallic bonding: lattice of positive ions held
together by delocalised electrons.

Metals are usually polycrystalline in structure. This

means they are formed of many grains, each of
atomic layers.
Polycrystalline silicon of a solar cell
Elastic region: Applied stress below yield stress

Inter-atomic bonds are stretched and material is deformed.

Plastic region: Applied stress exceeds yield stress
Non-directional bonding means layers of atoms can slip past each
other without fracturing the material.

Springback: elastic deformation recovers when tension removed.

e.g. during bending a metal must be pushed beyond the desired
angle before being released. DEMO?
 Dislocations

Imperfections are known as dislocations:

 Shaping and slipping
Toughness of metals Atoms in gold are in a regular array: a crystal lattice. To shape the metal, one
layer must be made to slide over another.
dislocation

To slip, layer of Atoms can

atoms must move one
move as a whole by one

One atom
All atoms move: moves:
layer moves dislocation
moves

atom
moves
dislocation
moves

Layer has Dislocation

moved one reaches
atomic spacing edge of
crystal

in both a layer has slipped by one atomic spacing

Stress required to cause slip is very high as many bonds need to be
simultaneously stretched
With dislocations present, only one bond need move at a time,
meaning imperfect metals can be worked wat much lower stresses.

These slip mechanisms mean metals tend to be ductile

c.f. moving a carpet with a wrinkle
Necking: A reduction in CSA due to layers of atoms slip over each other.

Actual CSA decreases as

atomic slip occurs

What shape would a force-extension graph be?

Crystallisation: During solidification, crystals start to form around
multiple nuclei, with different orientations.
 Creep: Time-dependent deformation under stress < σyield

Creep rate is temperature dependent – significantly greater in

metals above 40% of melting temperature.

Tertiary creep associated with necking

Creep usually leads to failure along grain boundaries running
perpendicular to the stress.

For high-temperature, high-stress uses, single crystals are grown.

(e.g. turbine blades in jet engines)

Trent XWB engine. Nickel alloy operates in environment

several hundred degrees above melting point!

NB: Usually smaller crystals makes a metal stronger, but at high

temperatures, creep effects dominate
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/rolls-royce-s
e-crystal-turbine-blade/
Other key words

Amorphous: Materials without long range order (i.e. not crystalline)

Isotropic: Properties are not direction dependent (they are the same
in all directions). Polycrystalline materials are usually isotropic even if
the individual grains would be anisotropic.

Anisotropic: Direction dependent properties. Single crystals are

usually anisotropic as the grains have different orientations and
properties cancel.