Lecture 1: Imperfection in Solid

Lecture 3: Dislocation & Strengthening Mechanism

Point Defect

Formed due to missing atoms

Vacancy Formed during crystaillisation/ solidification or mobility of atoms

- An empty space where atom
should be there but missing
Due to plastic deformation, rapid cooling or particle bombardment

Extra atom in crystal fit into interstitial site resulting in small void space

Point Defect
Self Interstitial Atoms Caused by irradiation (not natural)

Cause structural distortion

Impurity In solid Substitutional Impurity Atom - Different type bulk atom replaced one of
- Solute atoms are added to the host the bulk atoms in the lattice
material or solvent
- Crytsal structure is maintained Interstitial Impurity atom - Different type and smaller bulk atom fill the
.Eg:Alloy voids or interstitial among the host.
Vacancy

Self Interstitial
Atom

Substitutional
Atom

Interstitial
Impurity Atom

Condition for Substitutional Solid-Solution

Home-Rothery rule

1. Atomic Size
 Difference in atomic radii < 15%
 Otherwise will create substantial lattice distortion and a new phase will form
2. Crystal Structure
 To achieve appreciable solubility, atom type must be same
3. Electronegativity
 More electropositive and more electronegative element is favourable
 Otherwise will form intermetallic compound instead of substitutional solid solution
4. Valences
 Higher valency has higher tendency to dissolve another metal
Interfacial Defect

1. Boundaries that have two dimensions

2. Separate the region of material that have different crystal structure and crystallographic orientations

• External Surface Defect

• Surface atoms are not bonded to max no of nearest neighbours
• External surface atom has higher energy state than interior atoms.
• Free Surface: ONLY ONE side has higher energy state and bonded to atoms

• Grain Boundary
• Boundary that separates two adjacent grains with different crystallographic orientation.
It is formed due to simultaneously growing crystal meeting each other
• Impede the dislocation propagation. Since the lattice structure of adjacent grains differs
in orientation, it requires more energy for a dislocation to change directions and move
into the adjacent grain. The grain boundary is also much more disordered(atomic
mismatch) than inside the grain, which also prevents the dislocations from moving in a
continuous slip plane. Therefore, reducing plastic deformation and hence increase the
yield strength of the material.
• Allow rapid diffusion of atoms due to low atomic packing.
• More chemically reactive since it has higher boundary energy. Impurity atoms tends to
segregate along these boundary due to high energy state, also favor nucleation and
growth of precipitate.

• Twin Boundary
• Grain boundary with specific mirror lattic symmetry
• Formed during plantic deformation and recrystallisation
Dislocation

1. Line defects where some of the atom are misaligned and lattice distortion are centered around a line.
2. Dislocation motion in respond to an applied shear stress, resulting in slip - a shear displacement of two adjacent crystal planes of
atoms. Slip plane is the crystallographic plane along which the dislocation line travel.
3. Formed during solidification, plastic deformation, and consequences of thermal stresses results from rapid cooling.

•Edge dislocation
•Motion of dislocation is the respond to shear stress, the dislocation line move in a
direction parallel to the applied shear stress.
•Created by insertion of extra half plane

•Screw dislocation
•Motion of dislocation also is the respond to shear stress, the dislocation line move
in a direction perpendicular to shear stress.
•Distortion of lattice in the form of spiral ramp

•Mixed Dislocation
•Motion of dislocation include edge and screw dislocations
Slip

1. Is a shear displacement of two adjacent planes of atoms. Plastic deformation as a results of

dislocation motion. Slip plane is the crystallographic plane along which the dislocation line travel.

Dislocation density

1. Total dislocation line per unit volume (mm/mm3)

2. Number of dislocation that intersect a unit area of a random section (mm/mm2)
3. Careful solidification(uniform cooling) and heat treating of deformed metal will result in low
dislocation density.
Strain Field of Dislocation

1. Lattice distortion happens around the dislocation line because of the extra half plane of atoms.
Atoms immediately above the slip plane and adjacent to the dislocation line experience a
compressive strain while the atoms immediate below and adjacent the dislocation line experiences
a tensile strain.
2. The strain field surrounding the dislocations in close proximity to one another may interact and
imposed force on each dislocation.
3. Two edge dislocation with same sign will lie on the same side of the plane (either compressive or
tensile strain field) will results in a mutual repulsive force in which the dislocations tends to move
apart.
4. Two edge dislocation with opposite sign will share the same slip plane, results in a attractive force in
which both the dislocation is attracted to each other. The two extra half plane of atoms will align and
become a complete plane when the two dislocations meet. This is called dislocation annihilation and
a perfect crystal will produced.
Mechanisms of strengthening

1. Alloys are designed to have high strength yet some ductility and toughness. However, ductility is
often sacrificed when an alloy is strengthened.

* Toughness is the ability of a material to absorb energy and plastically deform without fracturing.
Withstand high force (strength) and high ductility (can be elongated)

* Tensile strength is maximum stress that the material can withstand before it starts to deform.

*Yield Strength is the point where the elastic change to plastic deformation

Relation between dislocation motion and mechanical behaviour of metals:

1. Hardness and strength are related to the ease of plastic deformation to occur.
2. Ability of a metal to deform plastically depends on the ability of a dislocation to move.
3. The mechanical strength and hardness of a metal can be improved by enhancing the resistance to
plastic deformation by reducing the mobility of dislocation (restricting and hindering dislocation)
4. So that greater mechanical forces are required to initiate plastic deformation.

Grain size reduction

1. Grain size can influence mechanical properties and improve both strength and toughness of many
alloys. Fine grained material is harder and stronger than coarse grain because it has more total grain
boundary area to impede dislocation motion.
2. Two reasons grain boundary acts as a barrier to dislocation motion:
a) During plastic deformation, dislocation must move across the common boundary from one grain
to an adjacent grain. Since the two adjacent grains are of different orientations, a dislocation
passing from one grain into the other will have to change its direction of motion.
b) The atomic disorder within a grain boundary region will result in a discontinuity of slip planes
when dislocation travels from one grain into the other.
3. Grain size can be regulated by
1) The rate of solidification(cooling rate) from the liquid phase
2) Plastic deformation followed by appropriate heat treatment (annealing)
Solid solution strengthening
1. Strengthening and hardening of metals by alloying with impurity atoms either by substitutional or
interstitial diffusion.
2. High purity metals are mostly soft and weak than alloys composed of the same base metal.
3. Impurity atoms impose lattice strains on the surrounding host atom. The lattice strain field
interaction between dislocation and the impurity atoms will restrict the dislocation motion.
Impurities segregate around dislocation to cancel some of the lattice strain surrounding a
dislocation. / Addition of impurity atoms will distort the lattice & generate stress. Stress can
produce a barrier to dislocation motion.

4. Small impurity atom tends to concentrate around dislocation to reduce the mobility of dislocation
thus increase strength. The small impurity located adjacent to dislocation line and above the slip
plane exerts tensile strain on the surrounding crystal lattice and will partially nullify the
compressive strain of the dislocation.
5. Large impurity that located adjacent to the dislocation line and below the slip plane exerts
compressive strains on the surrounding crystal lattice and will partially nullify the tensile strain
of the dislocation.
6. Factors affecting solid solution strengthening is:
a. As the size difference between solute and solvent atoms increases, the intensity of stress field
around solute atom increases and resistance to dislocation is increases, so strength of metal is
also increases.
b. A large concentration of solute atoms is added it means more frequent obstacles to
dislocation motion.
Strain Hardening (Cold working)

1. Strain hardening is a phenomenon by which a ductile metal increase it hardness and toughness as it
is plastically deformed at room temperature. The effects of strain hardening may be removed by
annealing heat treatment.
2. Dislocation density in a metal will increase with deformation(forging, rolling, extrusion) and cold
work due to dislocation multiplication and formation of new dislocation. The increase in
dislocation will decrease the average distance between the dislocation. Hence, the motion of
dislocation is hindered by the entangled dislocation and also due to the dislocation-dislocation
interactions are generally repulsive. Therefore, the stress needed to deform a metal increases with
increasing cold work.
3. It is called cold-working because the plastic deformation must occur at a temperature low enough
that atoms cannot rearrange themselves. When a metal is worked at higher temperatures (hot-
working) the dislocations can rearrange and little strengthening is achieved.

Heat treatment

1. When strain hardened materials are exposed to elevated temperatures, the strengthening that resulted
from the plastic deformation can be lost.
2. Heat treatment is used to relief internal strain energy of a previously cold-worked metal.
3. Plastic deformation will results in: change in grain shape, increase in dislocation density, storage of
strain energy.
Recovery

1. At elevated temperature, the atomic diffusion/mobility increases with rising temperature and hence
the atom in severe/high strain region will move to the unstrained region (relieve the internal strain
energy) which recover back to the normal position in the lattice structure.
2. The number of dislocation are reduced and dislocation with low strain energy is produced. After
recovery heat treatment, dislocation move up and rearrange to form sub-grain structure with low-
angle grain boundary (polygonization).The reduction of the dislocations allows the atoms to move
very freely and tends to relieve the internal stress of the system. This in turn makes the metal ductile
and softer. Recovery occurs in which there is a change in the stored energy without any obvious
change in the optical microstructure.
3. Electrical and thermal conductivity is recovered to precold-worked states.

Recrystallization

1. The grains are in still relatively high strain energy state even after recovery. Recrystallization is the
formation of a new set of strain-free & equiaxed grains inside the old distorted grains that have low
dislocation density and are characterisitic of the precold-worked condition. By short-range diffusion,
the new grains form as very small nuclei and grow until they completely consume and replaced the
elongated& distorted grain produced by strain hardening. The process is driven by the difference in
stored internal energy between the strained and unstrained region. Can be used to refine the grain
structure and restore the mechanical properties to their precold-work states(ductile and soft).
2. Degree of recrystallization increases with time.
3. Recrystallization temperature decreases with increasing purity of metal and raised by alloying
since the recrystallization rate decreases. Recrystallization occurs more rapidly in pure metals than
in alloys. It is believed that impurity atoms prefer to segregate at and interact with these
recrystallized grain boundaries, which will reduce the boundary mobilities and affect the new grain
growth. This will eventually decrease the recrystallization rate and raises the recrystallization
temperatures
4. Recrystallization temperature would be lowered if the percentage of cold work increases as the
recrystallization rate is enhanced (large difference of internal strain energy which drives the
recrystallization process), more nuclei for the new grains. and the resulting recrystallized grain size
will be smaller.
5. Increasing annealing time reduces recrystallization temperature, rate of recrystallization increases
with diffusion.
6. A smaller original cold-worked grain size reduces the recrystallization temperature.
7. Recrystallization temperature reaches a limiting value (constant) at high deformation.
Grain Growth

1. After recrystallization, the strain-free grains will continue to grow if the metal specimen is left at
elevated temperature. It is driven by the tendency to reduce the high grain boundary energy.
Grain boundary energy is the result of irregular bonding of atoms within the grain boundaries.
Hence, the grain size tends to increase and reduce the total boundary area which eventually reduce
the boundary energy.
2. Grain growth occurs by the migration of grain boundaries due to the short-range diffusion of
atoms from one side to another. The direction of boundary motion and atomic motion is opposite to
each other. Large grains grow at the expense of small ones that shrink.
3. Grain growth proceeds more rapidly as temperature increases since diffusion rate is enhanced by
rising temperature.

Hot Working
1. Permanent deformation of metal above recrystallisation temperature
2. Large deformation is possible which maybe successively repeated because the metal remains soft
and ductile.