Experimental Study of Strain Rockburst considering Temperature Effect: Status-of-the-Art and Prospect

In deep mining and excavation of tunnels with high geothermal, the surrounding rock is not only subjected to high ground stress but also subjected to high temperature. Temperature will change mechanical characteristics and energy storage capacity of rocks, as well as increase the destructiveness and randomness of rockburst. To reveal the mechanism of high-temperature strain burst in deep rock, the rockburst tests from uniaxial compression to three-dimensional compression were reviewed, and the research results of the minimum principal stress rapid unloading, true-triaxial loading with one free face, and dynamic disturbance triggered pre-heated granite rockburst simulation tests were focused on. According to the occurrence state of country rock for deep high-temperature and stress state in the whole process during excavation, six development directions for high-temperature strain rockburst simulation tests were proposed: (1) constructing the damage constitutive models of high-temperature rocks according to linear energy dissipation law; (2) developing the true triaxial rockburst simulation testing system accomplishing the function of “real-time high temperature + unloading + dynamic disturbance”; (3) considering the true triaxial rockburst simulation test after microwave irradiation; (4) developing the real-time high-temperature rockburst simulation testing device for large-size specimens and internal unloading; (5) focusing on the energy actuating mechanism for deep high-temperature rock failure via rockburst simulation tests; and (6) implementing the three-dimensional rockburst simulation test on the basis of deep in situ coring.

Pop-In Phenomenon as a Fundamental Plasticity Probed by Nanoindentation Technique

The attractive strain burst phenomenon, so-called “pop-in”, during indentation-induced deformation at a very small scale is discussed as a fundamental deformation behavior in various materials. The nanoindentation technique can probe a mechanical response to a very low applied load, and the behavior can be mechanically and physically analyzed. The pop-in phenomenon can be understood as incipient plasticity under an indentation load, and dislocation nucleation at a small volume is a major mechanism for the event. Experimental and computational studies of the pop-in phenomenon are reviewed in terms of pioneering discovery, experimental clarification, physical modeling in the thermally activated process, crystal plasticity, effects of pre-existing lattice defects including dislocations, in-solution alloying elements, and grain boundaries, as well as atomistic modeling in computational simulation. The related non-dislocation behaviors are also discussed in a shear transformation zone in bulk metallic glass materials and phase transformation in semiconductors and metals. A future perspective from both engineering and scientific views is finally provided for further interpretation of the mechanical behaviors of materials.

Statistics of dislocation avalanches in FCC and BCC metals: dislocation mechanisms and mean swept distances across microsample sizes and temperatures

Plastic deformation in crystalline materials consists of an ensemble of collective dislocation glide processes, which lead to strain burst emissions in micro-scale samples. To unravel the combined role of crystalline structure, sample size and temperature on these processes, we performed a comprehensive set of strict displacement-controlled micropillar compression experiments in conjunction with large-scale molecular dynamics and physics-based discrete dislocation dynamics simulations. The results indicate that plastic strain bursts consist of numerous individual dislocation glide events, which span over minuscule time intervals. The size distributions of these events exhibit a gradual transition from an incipient power-law slip regime (spanning $$\approx$$ ≈ 2.5 decades of slip sizes) to a large avalanche domain (spanning $$\approx$$ ≈ 4 decades of emission probability) at a cut-off slip magnitude $${s}_{\mathrm{c}}$$ s c . This cut-off slip provides a statistical measure to the characteristic mean dislocation swept distance, which allows for the scaling of the avalanche distributions vis-à-vis the archetypal dislocation mechanisms in face-centered cubic (FCC) and body-centered cubic (BCC) metals. Our statistical findings provide a new pathway to characterizing metal plasticity and towards comprehension of the sample size effects that limit the mechanical reliability in small-scale structures.

Microstructural Evolution of Al–Zn–Mg–Cu Alloys in Accordance with Homogenization Time

The microstructural evolution of Al–Zn–Mg–Cu alloys has been investigated for the homogenization time effect on the texture, grain orientation and dislocation density. The Al–Zn–Mg–Cu alloys were casted and homogenized for 4, 8, 16 and 24 hours. Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) analysis was conducted to characterize the microstructural behavior. Micropillars were fabricated using focused ion beam (FIB) milling in grains of specific crystallographic orientations. Coarse precipitations in the grain boundaries are S (Al2CuMg) and T (Al2Mg3Zn3) phases verified by scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) observation. With increasing homogenization time, equiaxed cell sizes increased. The volume fraction of S and T phases decreased with the diffusion of atomic elements into matrix. The Vickers hardness and tensile strength values decreased with homogenization temperature. The micropillar compression analysis was compared to macro tensile test results to understand the size effect and strain burst phenomenon on the mechanical properties of Al–Zn–Mg–Cu alloys.