Thirty Years of Superplastic Ultrafine-Grained Materials: Examining the Legacy of Oscar Kaibyshev

The occurrence of superplasticity may be traced to the classic work of Pearson conducted in the U.K. in 1934 when an elongation of 1950% was reported in a Pb-Sn eutectic alloy. Subsequently, much attention in Russia was devoted to this scientific curiosity and this led to the first book on superplasticity written by Prof. A.A. Presnyakov and published in 1964. Later, in 1985, Oscar Kaibyshev established in Ufa the Institute of Problems of Superplasticity of Metals of the Russian Academy of Sciences and this was, and remains to this day, the only institute in the world devoted exclusively to studies of the phenomenon of superplastic flow and the development through superplastic forming of complex-shaped parts. An important development occurred in 1988 with the publication of a classic report by Kaibyshev and co-workers describing the potential for achieving low temperature superplasticity in a metallic Al-Cu-Zr alloy that had been specially processed by severe plastic deformation (SPD) to produce a remarkably small grain size of only 300 nm. This report formed the basis for the later development of SPD processing as a major tool for the production of exceptional grain refinement and as a procedure for achieving large superplastic elongations that cannot be achieved using more conventional processing. This report describes this early work, the subsequent developments and the modern status of superplastic flow in ultrafine-grained metals.