Lecture 29

Mechanical Behaviour of Materials

31 October 2022

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Slip Systems

Slip occurs on well defined

crystallographic planes and
directions!

The combination of a
crystallographic plane and direction
is called a slip system.

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 Slip systems in FCC metals

• 4 {111} planes.
• 3 <110> directions
per plane.
• Totally 12 slip
systems.

3
Slip Systems

4
Tensile loading does impose a shear stress
P = applied load P
Ao = cross sectional area of the specimen
A = area of the actual slip plane.
Φ = angle between stress axis and the slip plane normal
λ = angle between stress axis and the slip direction.

Note that Φ+ λ need not equal 90 degrees because the stress axis,
plane normal and the slip direction are not necessarily coplanar.

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Resolved shear stress on the slip plane in the slip direction
P

Force acting along the slip direction = P.cosλ

Area of the slip plane =

.
Hence resolved shear stress,
/

6
How to calculate angles between directions?

Angle, between two directions [u1 v1 w1] and [u2 v2 w2] for a
cubic unit cell is given by the below equation

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Schmid’s Law

• In general
• When the RSS ( ) reaches a critical value, slip occurs. This is
called the critical resolved shear stress CRSS ( .
• The uniaxial stress that causes the RSS to reach a critical value
is the yield stress for a single crystal.
• That is
• Schmid’s law states that CRSS is a material constant. So if the
orientation of the slip plane w.r.t. to the stress axis changes, the
will change but NOT .
• is called the Schmid factor.

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Discrepancy between theoretical strength and experimental CRSS

Experimental strength is MUCH lower than the theoretically predicted strength of G/6!

Material Actual Shear Modulus Theoretical Theoretical

CRSS (G) strength (G/6) strength/CRSS
(MPa) GPa GPa
Cu 0.5 44 7.3 14600
Al 0.75 25 4.1 5555
Fe 15 70 11.6 777

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Why is the experimental strength so much lower?

Slip in a
perfect crystal
will need a
B A B
high shear A
stress of G/6

a a
But crystals contain dislocations, see below. These reduce the shear stress needed for slip in crystals.

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12
How to strengthen materials?

• One way is to eliminate dislocations entirely. Single crystal

whiskers do show strength approaching the theoretical value.
• But this is rather impractical, because any manufacturing
technique will inevitably introduce dislocations in the material.

• So what other mechanisms can be used??

• Grain size refinement
• Solid solution strengthening
• Strain hardening
• Precipitate strengthening.

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Grain size strengthening

Sand-cast 3D-printed

• Remember the grain

refinement we
discussed in phase
transformations?

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 The mechanism of grain size strengthening

• The disorder at the grain

boundary means discontinuity in
the lattice planes. Also, the
same plane does not continue
into the next grain. This poses
an obstacle to the dislocation
motion.
• In many cases, dislocations do
not pass from one grain to the
next, but simply pile up at the
grain boundaries.
• Further deformation depends on
the activation of another
dislocation in grain B, a process
which requires a higher stress.
• This causes strengthening of the
alloy.

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Finer the grain size, more the number of
grain boundaries!
• Hence, intuitively,
one can expect
finer grain-sized
material to present
more obstacles to
dislocation motion.
• Leading to a higher
strength.

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17
The Hall-Petch equation

Data for brass (Cu70Zn30 alloy).

𝒚 is the yield strength of a

polycrystalline metal (MN m−2).
𝒐 is the strength at “infinite” grain size,
i.e. single crystal! (MN m−2).
k is the Hall Petch constant. This
decides the magnitude of strengthening
in various materials. (MN m−3/2).
d is the average grain diameter (m).

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