Strengthening of Al-Cu single crystals by stress-oriented Guinier-Preston zones

Orientation Dependent Hardening by <001> Rod-Shaped Misfitting Precipitates in Aluminium Alloys

A coherent precipitate formed in a metallic alloy is of importance in its strengthening mechanism, owing to dislocation/precipitate interaction. Therefore, the present study investigated the effect of <001> rod-shaped precipitates on misfit hardening in aluminium alloys by means of parametric dislocation dynamics simulation based on Green’s function method. The simulation results revealed that the topological evolution of the dislocation microstructure is greatly influenced by local internal stress around the <001> rod precipitate. The strong orientation dependence of misfit hardening was observed for the gradients of the stress–strain curves and their maximum shear stresses, where the difference in the maximum stress values amounted to 30%. The strong and weak hardening behaviours associated with the internal stress of <001> rod precipitates were implemented in terms of the energy associated with the dislocation motion.

Internal Stress and Dislocation Interaction of Plate-Shaped Misfitting Precipitates in Aluminum Alloys

The fine misfit precipitates in age-hardenable aluminum alloys have important roles due to their excellent age-hardening ability, by their interaction with dislocations. The present study focused on the internal stress field of plate-shaped misfitting precipitates to evaluate their roles in dislocation overcoming the precipitates by means of micromechanics based on Green's function method. The stress field of misfit precipitates on {001} and {111} habit planes were reproduced by homogeneous misfit strain (eigenstrain) of the precipitate (Eshelby inclusion method), and the dislocation motion vector on the primary slip plane was predicted by the force acted on the dislocation by the Peach-Koehler formula. According to simulation results, the dislocation interaction strongly depends on the stress field and geometry of misfit precipitates; repulsive and attractive forces are operated on the dislocations lying on the primary slip plane when the dislocation approaches the misfit precipitates. The hardening ability of different orientations of precipitation variants was discussed in terms of interaction force acted on the dislocation.