Visualization and validation of twin nucleation and early-stage growth in magnesium

The abrupt occurrence of twinning when Mg is deformed leads to a highly anisotropic response, making it too unreliable for structural use and too unpredictable for observation. Here, we describe an in-situ transmission electron microscopy experiment on Mg crystals with strategically designed geometries for visualization of a long-proposed but unverified twinning mechanism. Combining with atomistic simulations and topological analysis, we conclude that twin nucleation occurs through a pure-shuffle mechanism that requires prismatic-basal transformations. Also, we verified a crystal geometry dependent twin growth mechanism, that is the early-stage growth associated with instability of plasticity flow, which can be dominated either by slower movement of prismatic-basal boundary steps, or by faster glide-shuffle along the twinning plane. The fundamental understanding of twinning provides a pathway to understand deformation from a scientific standpoint and the microstructure design principles to engineer metals with enhanced behavior from a technological standpoint.

Investigating the dislocation reactions on Σ3{111} twin boundary during deformation twin nucleation process in an ultrafine-grained high-manganese steel

Some of ultrafine-grained (UFG) metals including UFG twinning induced plasticity (TWIP) steels have been found to overcome the paradox of strength and ductility in metals benefiting from their unique deformation modes. Here, this study provides insights into the atomistic process of deformation twin nucleation at Σ3{111} twin boundaries, the dominant type of grain boundary in this UFG high manganese TWIP steel. In response to the applied tensile stresses, grain boundary sliding takes place which changes the structure of coherent Σ3{111} twin boundary from atomistically smooth to partly defective. High resolution transmission electron microscopy demonstrates that the formation of disconnection on Σ3{111} twin boundaries is associated with the motion of Shockley partial dislocations on the boundaries. The twin boundary disconnections act as preferential nucleation sites for deformation twin that is a characteristic difference from the coarse-grained counterpart, and is likely correlated with the lethargy of grain interior dislocation activities, frequently seen in UFG metals. The deformation twin nucleation behavior will be discussed based on in-situ TEM deformation experiments and nanoscale strain distribution analyses results.

A Review on Capturing Twin Nucleation in Crystal Plasticity for Hexagonal Metals

Owing to its ability to incorporate Schmid’s law at each integration point, crystal plasticity has proven a powerful tool to simulate and predict the slip behavior at the grain level and the ensuing heterogeneous stress/strain localization and texture evolution at the macroscopic level. Unfortunately, notwithstanding substantial efforts during the last three decades, this remarkable capability has not been replicated for materials where twinning becomes a noticeable deformation mechanism, namely in the case of low-stacking fault energy cubic, orthorhombic, and hexagonal close-packed structures. The culprit lies in the widely adopted unphysical pseudo-slip approach for capturing twin formation. While the slip is diffuse, twinning is a localized event that occurs as a drastic burst of a confined number of partial twinning dislocations establishing an interface that pursues growth through a thread of perfect twinning dislocations in the sense of bicrystallography. Moreover, at earlier stages, twin nucleation may require atomic diffusion (Shuffling) and faceting, generally demanding higher stress levels not necessarily on the twin shear plane, while triaxiality at adequate sites might be needed or preferred such as lower grain boundary misorientations or other twin boundaries. Identifying a mathematical framework in the constitutive equations for capturing these twin formation sensitivities has been a daunting challenge for crystal plasticity modelers, which has stalled ameliorating the design of key hexagonal materials for futuristic climate change-related industries. This paper reviews existing approaches to incorporating twinning in crystal plasticity models, discusses their capabilities, addresses their limitations, and suggests prospective views to fill gaps. The incorporation of a new physics-based twin nucleation criterion in crystal plasticity models holds groundbreaking potential for substantial progress in the field of computational material science.

A correlation between grain boundary character and deformation twin nucleation mechanism in coarse-grained high-Mn austenitic steel

In polycrystalline materials, grain boundaries are known to be a critical microstructural component controlling material’s mechanical properties, and their characters such as misorientation and crystallographic boundary planes would also influence the dislocation dynamics. Nevertheless, many of generally used mechanistic models for deformation twin nucleation in fcc metal do not take considerable care of the role of grain boundary characters. Here, we experimentally reveal that deformation twin nucleation occurs at an annealing twin (Σ3{111}) boundary in a high-Mn austenitic steel when dislocation pile-up at Σ3{111} boundary produced a local stress exceeding the twining stress, while no obvious local stress concentration was required at relatively high-energy grain boundaries such as Σ21 or Σ31. A periodic contrast reversal associated with a sequential stacking faults emission from Σ3{111} boundary was observed by in-situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) deformation experiments, proving the successive layer-by-layer stacking fault emission was the deformation twin nucleation mechanism, different from the previously reported observations in the high-Mn steels. Since this is also true for the observed high Σ-value boundaries in this study, our observation demonstrates the practical importance of taking grain boundary characters into account to understand the deformation twin nucleation mechanism besides well-known factors such as stacking fault energy and grain size.

Visualization and Validation of Twin Nucleation and Early-stage Growth in Magnesium

The abrupt occurrence of twinning when Mg is deformed leads to a highly anisotropic response, making it too unreliable for structural use and too unpredictable for observation. Here, we describe an in-situ transmission electron microscopy experiment on Mg crystals with strategically designed geometries for visualization of a long-proposed but unverified twinning mechanism. Combining with atomistic simulations and topological analysis, we conclude that twin nucleation occurs through a pure-shuffle mechanism that requires prismatic-basal transformations. Also, we verified a crystal geometry dependent twin growth mechanism, that is the early-stage growth associated with instability of plasticity flow, which can be dominated either by slower movement of prismatic-basal boundary steps, or by faster glide-shuffle along the twinning plane. The fundamental understanding of twinning provides a pathway to understand deformation from a scientific standpoint and the microstructure design principles to engineer metals with unprecedented combinations of properties from a technological standpoint.