Determining elastic anisotropy of textured polycrystals using resonant ultrasound spectroscopy

Polycrystalline materials can have complex anisotropic properties depending on their crystallographic texture and crystal structure. In this study, we use resonant ultrasound spectroscopy (RUS) to nondestructively quantify the elastic anisotropy in extruded aluminum alloy 1100-O, an inherently low-anisotropy material. Further, we show that RUS can be used to indirectly provide a description of the material’s texture, which in the present case is found to be transversely isotropic. By determining the entire elastic tensor, we can identify the level and orientation of the anisotropy originated during extrusion. The relative anisotropy of the compressive (c11/c33) and shear (c44/c66) elastic constants is 1.5% ± 0.5% and 5.7% ± 0.5%, respectively, where the elastic constants (five independent elastic constants for transversely isotropic) are those associated with the extrusion axis that defines the symmetry of the texture. These results indicate that the texture is expected to have transversely isotropic symmetry. This finding is confirmed by two additional approaches. First, we confirm elastic constants and the degree of elastic anisotropy by direct sound velocity measurements using ultrasonic pulse echo. Second, neutron diffraction (ND) data confirm the symmetry of the bulk texture consistent with extrusion-induced anisotropy, and polycrystal elasticity simulations using the elastic self-consistent model with input from ND textures and aluminum single-crystal elastic constants render similar levels of polycrystal elastic anisotropy to those measured by RUS. We demonstrate the ability of RUS to detect texture-induced anisotropy in inherently low-anisotropy materials. Therefore, as many other common materials have intrinsically higher elastic anisotropy, this technique should be applicable for similar levels of texture, providing an efficient general diagnostic and characterization tool.

Concurrent Multiscale Simulations of Rough Lubricated Contact of Aluminum Single Crystal

In this paper, a concurrent multiscale simulation strategy coupling atomistic and continuum models was proposed to investigate the three-dimensional contact responses of aluminum single crystal under both dry and lubricated conditions. The Hertz contact is performed by using both the multiscale and full molecular dynamics (MD) simulations for validation. From the contact area, kinetic energy and stress continuity aspects, the multiscale model shows good accuracy. It can also save at least five times the computational time compared with the full MD simulations for the same domain size. Furthermore, the results of lubricated contact show that the lubricant molecules could effectively cover the contact surfaces; thereby separating the aluminum surfaces and bearing the support loads. Moreover, the surface topography could be protected by the thin film formed by the lubricant molecules. It has been found that the contact area decreases obviously with increasing the magnitude of load under both dry and lubricated contacts. Besides, a decrease in contact area is also seen when the number of lubricant molecules increases. The present study has confirmed that the dimension of lubricated contacts could be greatly expanded during the simulation using the proposed multiscale method without sacrificing too much computational time and accuracy.

Cube{100}<001> Grains Nucleation during Annealing of S-Oriented Aluminum Single Crystal

The crystallographic aspects of nucleation of cube grains during annealing have been analyzed in (234)[20-28 11] - oriented aluminum single crystal. The samples were plane strain compressed in a channel-die up to logarithmic strains of 0.5 (40%) and then annealed to develop initial and final stages of primary recrystallization. The deformed and annealed samples were analyzed using scanning electron microscopy equipped with EBSD facility. Local orientation measurements reveled that significant part of the sample deforms homogeneously with only small deviation from the initial crystal orientation. The heterogeneities were thin bands of localized strain in which the crystal lattice rotate towards another variant of S orientation. After annealing the orientations identified inside deformed/recovered areas were similar to that observed in the sample just after deformation. The crystal lattice of recrystallized grains exhibit a well-defined clockwise and anticlockwise rotations around the axes grouped near all normals of the {111} planes of the deformed/recovered state. The cube grains were observed in both homogeneously and heterogeneously deformed areas despite the cube-oriented nuclei surrounded by high angle boundary were not present in the as-deformed structure.