Most of crystalline materials exhibit a hysteresis on their deformation curve when mechanically loaded in alternating directions. This Bauschinger effect is the signature of mechanisms existing at the atomic scale and controlling the materials damage and ultimately their failure. Here, three-dimensional simulations of dislocation dynamics and statistical analyses of the microstructure evolution reveal two original elementary mechanisms. An asymmetry in the dislocation network junctions arising from the stress driven curvatures and the partial reversibility of plastic avalanches give an explanation to the traction-compression asymmetry observed in FCC single-crystals. These mechanisms are then connected in a physically justified way to larger-scale representations using a dislocation density based theory. Parameter-free predictions of the Bauschinger effect and strain hardening during cyclic deformation in different materials and over a range of loading directions and different plastic strain amplitudes are found to be in excellent agreement with experiments. This work brings invaluable mechanistic insights for the interpretation of experiments and for the design of structural components to consolidate their service life under cyclic load.
Tension-compression asymmetry is a notable feature of plasticity in bcc single crystals. Recent experiments reveal striking differences in the plasticity of bcc nanopillars for tension and compression. Here we present results from molecular dynamics simulations of nanopillars of bcc Fe in tension and compression. We find that a totally different deformation mechanism applies in each cases: dislocation glide in compression and twinning in tension. This difference explains experimentally-observed asymmetry in the nanopillar morphology.
In this paper it is demonstrated that only by accounting for the combined effects of anisotropy and tension-compression asymmetry both at single crystal and polycrystal levels, it is possible to explain and accurately predict the peculiarities of the room-temperature torsional response of a strongly textured AZ31 Mg material. This is shown by using two modeling frameworks, namely: the viscoplastic self-consistent (VPSC) polycrystal model that accounts for tension-compression asymmetry of the mechanical response of a polycrystalline aggregate due to the occurrence of twinning at single crystal …
Most of crystalline materials develop an hysteresis on their deformation curve when a mechanical loading is applied in alternating directions. This effect, also known as the Bauschinger effect, is intimately related to the reversibile part of the plastic deformation and controls the materials damage and ultimately their failure. In the present work, we associate mesoscale Dislocation Dynamics simulations and Finite Element simulations to identify two original dislocation mechanisms at the origin of the traction/compression asymmetry and quantify their impacts on the cyclic behaviour of FCC sin…
Strain-controlled fatigue of Mg-1Mn-0.5Nd (wt.\%) alloy were studied by experiment and simulation. The microstructure was made up of a dispersion of strongly texture grains (13\%) embedded in a matrix of grains with a random texture. The cyclic stress-strain curves showed limited tension-compression anisotropy because of the limited texture. Cyclic hardening under compression and cyclic softening under tension occurred due to the presence of twinning. Moreover, the twin volume fraction of the broken samples depended on whether the sample was broken in tension or compression, indicating that tw…
Microstructural and Mechanistic Insights into the Tension-Compression Asymmetry of Rapidly Solidified Fe-Cr Alloys: A Phase Field and Strain Gradient Plasticity Study
The effect of cyclic loading on relaxation dynamics and mechanical properties of metallic glasses is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. We consider the Kob-Andersen three-dimensional binary mixture rapidly cooled across the glass transition and subjected to thousands of tension-compression cycles in the elastic range. It was found that during cyclic loading at constant pressure, the system is relocated to progressively lower levels of the potential energy, thus promoting greater densification and higher strength. Furthermore, with increasing stress amplitude, the average glass densi…
In this paper, the dilatational response of porous solids with pressure-insensitive matrix displaying strength differential (SD) effects is investigated. To this end, micromechanical finite-element analyses of three-dimensional unit cells are carried out. The matrix behavior is governed by the isotropic form of Cazacu et al. (2006) criterion that accounts for SD effects through a parameter k. Simulation results are presented for axisymmetric tensile loadings corresponding to fixed values of the stress triaxiality for the two possible values of the Lode parameter, LP. For moderate and high stre…
The process of structural relaxation in disordered solids subjected to repeated tension-compression loading is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. The binary glass is prepared by rapid cooling well below the glass transition temperature and then periodically strained at constant volume. We find that the amorphous system is relocated to progressively lower potential energy states during hundreds of cycles, and the energy levels become deeper upon approaching critical strain amplitude from below. The decrease in potential energy is associated with collective nonaffine rearrangements of…
Molecular dynamics simulations have been performed to understand the variations in deformation mechanisms of Cu nanowires as a function of orientation and loading mode (tension or compression). Cu nanowires of different crystallographic orientations distributed uniformly on the standard stereographic triangle have been considered under tensile and compressive loading. The simulation results indicate that under compressive loading, the orientations close to $<$100$>$ corner deform by twinning mechanism, while the remaining orientations deform by dislocation slip. On the other hand, all the nano…
Crystalline materials exhibit an hysteresis behaviour when deformed cyclically. The origins of this tension-compression asymmetry have been fully understood only recently as being caused by an asymmetry in the junction strength and a reduced mean free path of dislocations inherited from previous deformation stage. Here, we investigate the saturation stress in fcc single- and poly-crystals using a Crystal Plasticity framework derived from dislocation dynamics simulations. In the absence of plastic localization and damage mechanism, the single-crystal mechanical response eventually saturates. We…
In this paper we present a thermodynamically consistent material model which is capable of modelling ductile-to brittle failure mode transition in ductile material undergoing deformations at high strain rates, and demonstrate the performance of the model in a numerical study using a fully coupled thermal-structural finite element analysis of a notched aluminium alloy specimen loaded in cyclic tension. The model is based on an objective representation of the deformation and stress measures and on a rate type constitutive equations. It does not only complies with the principles of material model…
The cyclic deformation behavior of extruded Mg-8.5wt.%Al alloy with a conventional extrusion texture and a modified texture is systematically investigated by in-situ neutron diffraction and elastic viscoplastic self-consistent (EVPSC) modeling incorporating a twinning/de-twinning (TDT) scheme. The role of twinning and de-twinning on the deformation behavior of Mg-8.5wt.% Al alloy is investigated in terms of the macroscopic stress-strain response, the evolution of the activities of various deformation mechanisms, the texture evolution, the evolution of the internal elastic strains, and the evol…
Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) are a unique class of intermetallic alloys that can cyclically sustain large deformations and recover a designed geometry through a solid-to-solid phase transformation. SMAs provide favorable actuation energy density properties, making them suitable for engineering applications requiring a significant, repeated, work output. To facilitate the development and validation of an SMA constitutive model considering the evolving anisotropic material response for High-Temperature SMA (HTSMA), uniaxial and pure bending actuation cycling tests on HTSMA specimens are performed …
Using molecular dynamics simulations, we provide chain-level insights into the dissimilarities in rearrangements of polymers under uniaxial tensile and compressive deformation in glassy and semicrystalline samples of varying chain lengths. The organization of polymers under tension and compression is distinctively different. The chains align themselves along the tensile axis leading to a net global nematic ordering of their bonds and end-to-end vectors whereas under compression, the polymers arrange themselves in a plane perpendicular to the compressive axis resulting in emergence of an anti-n…
This paper aimed at extending a model developed by Ladeveze to capture thermal expansion and coupled thermo-mechanical phenomena, as such as those encountered at elevated and extreme temperatures. In the new model a linear thermal expansion coefficient is added to equation of state to account for the thermal to mechanical coupling effects. The mechanical to thermal effects are introduced by assuming an internal heat generation due to residual strain effects. The constitutive relations of the coupled thermo-mechanical behaviors of ceramic matrix composite material model were incorporated into A…
A Crystal Plasticity Finite Element (CPFE) framework is proposed for modeling the non-Schmid yield behavior of L12 type Ni3Al crystals and Ni-based superalloys. This framework relies on the estimation of the non-Schmid model parameters directly from the orientation- and temperature-dependent experimental yield stress data. The inelastic deformation model for Ni3Al crystals is extended to the precipitate phase of Ni-based superalloys in a homogenized dislocation density based crystal plasticity framework. The framework is used to simulate the orientation- and temperature-dependent yield of Ni3A…
Gradient structured (GS) metals processed by severe plastic deformation techniques can be designed to achieve simultaneously high strength and high ductility. Significant kinematic hardening is key to their excellent strain hardening capacity which results in a favorable strength-ductility combination. Unfortunately, no constitutive model has been established to simulate and analyze the characteristic kinematic hardening behavior of GS metal to understand the relationship between their microstructure and macroscopic response. In this work, we developed a deformation-mechanismbased strain gradi…
Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations have been carried out to investigate the deformation behaviour of <110>/{111} body centered cubic (BCC) Fe nanowires under tensile and compressive loading. An embedded atom method (EAM) potential was used to describe the interatomic interactions. The simulations were carried out at 10 K with a constant strain rate of $1\times10^{8}$ $s^{-1}$. The results indicate a significant differences in deformation mechanisms under tensile and compressive loading. Under tensile loading, the deformation occurs by the slip of full dislocations, While under compressive loa…
In crystalline materials, the creation and modulation of dislocations are often associated with plastic deformation and energy dissipation. Here we report a study on the energy dissipation of a trilayer graphene ribbon resonator. The vibration of the ribbon generates cyclic mechanical loading to the graphene ribbon, during which mechanical energy is dissipated as heat. Measuring the quality factor of the graphene resonator provides a way to evaluate the energy dissipation. The graphene ribbon is integrated with silicon micro actuators, allowing its in-plane tension to be finely tuned. As we gr…
