Revised Bounds on the Elastic Moduli of Two-Dimensional Random Polycrystals

Our earlier derived bounds on the elastic moduli of two-dimensional random polycrystals [1, 2] involve a geometric restriction through an assumption on the form of an isotropic eight-rank tensor. The general form of the tensor is used in this study to reconstruct the bounds, which are expected to approach the scatter range for the moduli of the irregular aggregate.     

Orthotropically textured elastic aggregates of cubic crystals

The linear orthotropic relations between stress and infinitesimal strain require only seven, instead of the usual nine, independent elastic moduli, and one of them can be identified as a bulk modulus coincident with that common to all the grains. Each of the remaining six overall moduli is placed between upper and lower, “Voigt-Reuss-Hill”, and also “Hashin- Shtrikman”, bounds, in terms of the grain moduli and of three measurable parameters that take account of the particular mix of lattice orientations. One or more of them can be determined at once in exceptional cases where the grains all have a particular fixed or somewhat variable lattice orientation: the upper and lower bounds come to the appropriate coincidence then. Generally the vagaries of the configuration have an influence in keeping each pair of bounds apart, but effective estimates of the overall elastic moduli can be offered, except perhaps when the grains have a very pronounced cubic anisotropy. We shall refer in particular to the more symmetrical, tetragonal and transversely isotropic, textures for which correspondingly fewer overall moduli and orientation parameters are required.     

A variational approach to the theory of the elastic behaviour of polycrystals

Variational principles for anisotropic and nonhomogeneous elasticity, established by the authors in a previous paper, have been applied to the derivation of lower and upper bounds for the elastic moduli of polycrystals in terms of the moduli of the constituting crystals. The results hold for arbitrary crystal shapes. Explicit results tor cubic polycrystals showed that the present bounds are a considerable improvement of the well-known Voigt and Reuss bounds. Good agreement with experimental results has been obtained.     

Effet de l'anisotropie élastique cristalline sur la distribution des facteurs de Schmid à la surface des polycristauxInfluence of crystalline elasticity anisotropy on Schmid factor distribution at the free surface of polycrystals

Experimental studies of the plasticity mechanisms of polycrystals are usually based on the Schmid factor distribution supposing crystalline elasticity isotropy. A numerical evaluation of the effect of crystalline elasticity anisotropy on the apparent Schmid factor distribution at the free surface of polycrystals is presented. Cubic elasticity is considered. Order II stresses (averaged on all grains with the same crystallographic orientation) as well as variations between averages computed on grains with the same crystallographic orientation but with different neighbour grains are computed. The Finite Element Method is used. Commonly studied metals presenting an increasing anisotropy degree are considered (aluminium, nickel, austenite, copper). Concerning order II stresses in strongly anisotropic metals, the apparent Schmid factor distribution is drifted towards small Schmid factor values (the maximum Schmid factor is equal to 0.43 instead of 0.5) and the slip activation order between characteristic orientations of the crystallographic standard triangle is modified. The computed square deviations of the stresses averaged on grains with the same crystallographic orientation but with different neighbour grains are a bit higher than the second order ones (inter-orientation scatter). Our numerical evaluations agree quantitatively with several observations and measures of the literature concerning stress and strain distribution in copper and austenite polycrystals submitted to low amplitude loadings. Hopefully, the given apparent Schmid factor distributions could help to better understand the observations of the plasticity mechanisms taking place at the free surface of polycrystals. To cite this article: M. Sauzay, C. R. Mecanique 334 (2006).     

Elastic properties of chiral,anti-chiral,and hierarchical honeycombs:A simple energy-based approach

The effects of two geometric refinement strategies widespread in natural structures, chirality and self-similar hierarchy, on the in-plane elastic response of two-dimensional honeycombs were studied systematically. Simple closed-form expressions were derived for the elastic moduli of several chiral, antichiral, and hierarchical honeycombs with hexagon and square based networks. Finite element analysis was employed to validate the analytical estimates of the elastic moduli. The results were also compared with the numerical and experimental data available in the literature. We found that introducing a hierarchical refinement increases the Young's modulus of hexagon based honeycombs while decreases their shear modulus. For square based honeycombs, hierarchy increases the shear modulus while decreasing their Young's modulus. Introducing chirality was shown to always decrease the Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio of the structure. However, chirality remains the only route to auxeticity. In particular, we found that anti-tetra-chiral structures were capable of simultaneously exhibiting anisotropy, auxeticity,and remarkably low shear modulus as the magnitude of the chirality of the unit cell increases.     

Scattering of elastic waves in simple and complex polycrystals

The propagation of elastic waves in polycrystals is a classical topic with a rich history of research, with primary focus on attenuation in single phase materials with randomly oriented, equiaxed grains. Over the last decade, the need to nondestructively evaluate the degree of damage of engineering components has led to extension of the classical understanding to a number of more complex cases. These motivations include the desire to understand how the noise backscattered from microstructure, and limiting flaw detectability, is controlled by the measurement configuration and microstructure of the material, the desire to use the understanding of attenuation and backscattering in designing improved inspections and in assessing their capability as quantified by probability of detection, and the desire to develop improved procedures for characterizing microstructures. This paper provides an overview of this work. A brief review of the classical understanding of how elastic waves are attenuated and backscattered by scattering from grain boundaries in randomly oriented polycrystals is first presented. This is followed by the results of recent experiments and analysis concerning how these phenomena change in engineering materials with more complex microstructures. For single phase polycrystals, the paper presents results verifying the classical theories in copper, showing how these theories can be used to determine single crystal elastic constants from measurements in alloy polycrystals, demonstrating this technique on nickel-base superalloys, and providing evidence of multiple scattering effects that are not accounted for in the classical, first-order theory. Additional results are presented in titanium alloys having duplex microstructures that demonstrate the existence of fluctuations of beam amplitude and phase, and a simple two-dimensional theory is presented which qualitatively explains the results. The paper concludes with the presentation of some pitch–catch (bi-static) experiments that clearly illustrate the role of multiple scattering.     

Second-order theory for the effective behavior and field fluctuations in viscoplastic polycrystals

A recently developed “second-order” homogenization procedure (Ponte Castañeda (J. Mech. Phys. Solids 50 (2002a, b) 737, 759)) is extended to viscoplastic polycrystals and applied to compute the effective response of a certain special class of isotropic polycrystals. The method itself reduces to a simple expression requiring the computation of the averages of the stress field and the covariances of its fluctuations over the various grain orientations in an optimally selected “linear comparison polycrystal”. Therefore, the method not only allows the determination of the effective behavior of the polycrystal, but as a byproduct also yields information on the heterogeneity of the stress and strain-rate fields within the polycrystal. An application is given for a model 2-dimensional, isotropic polycrystal with power-law behavior for the constituent grains. The resulting predictions for the effective behavior are found to satisfy sharp bounds available from the literature and to be consistent with the results of recent numerical simulations. The associated averages and fluctuations of the stresses and strain rates are found to depend strongly on the strain-rate sensitivity (i.e., nonlinearity) and grain anisotropy. In particular, the stress and strain-rate fluctuations were found to grow and become strongly anisotropic with increasing values of the nonlinearity and grain anisotropy parameters.     

Thermoelastic stresses in a cylinder or disk with cubic anisotropy

The thermoelastic stresses in a crystal in the shape of a circular cylinder or disk are considered. The crystal is a cubically-orthotropic linear elastic solid, with three independent elastic properties. The cubic anisotropy renders the problem asymmetric, despite the axisymmetry of the geometry and thermal loading. This problem is motivated by a thermoelastic model used for certain crystal growth processes. Two simplifying assumptions are made here: (a) the problem is two-dimensional with plane strain or plain stress conditions, and (b) the elastic properties do not depend on the temperature. A new Fourier-type perturbation method is devised and an analytic asymptotic solution of a closed form is obtained, based on the weak cubic anisotropy of the crystal as a perturbation parameter. A general solution technique is described which yields the asymptotic solution up to a desired order. Numerical results are presented for typical parameter values.     

Bounds and self-consistent estimates for elastic constants of random polycrystals with hexagonal, trigonal, and tetragonal symmetries

Peselnick, Meister, and Watt have developed rigorous methods for bounding elastic constants of random polycrystals based on the Hashin-Shtrikman variational principles. In particular, a fairly complex set of equations that amounts to an algorithm has been presented previously for finding the bounds on effective elastic moduli for polycrystals having hexagonal, trigonal, and tetragonal symmetries. A more analytical approach developed here, although based on the same ideas, results in a new set of compact formulas for all the cases considered. Once these formulas have been established, it is then straightforward to perform what could be considered an analytic continuation of the formulas (into the region of parameter space between the bounds) that can subsequently be used to provide self-consistent estimates for the elastic constants in all cases. This approach is very similar in spirit but differs in its details from earlier work of Willis, showing how Hashin-Shtrikman bounds and certain classes of self-consistent estimates may be related. These self-consistent estimates always lie within the bounds for physical choices of the crystal elastic constants and for all the choices of crystal symmetry considered. For cubic symmetry, the present method reproduces the self-consistent estimates obtained earlier by various authors, but the formulas for both bounds and estimates are generated in a more symmetric form. Numerical values of the estimates obtained this way are also very comparable to those found by the Gubernatis and Krumhansl coherent potential approximation (or CPA), but do not require computations of scattering coefficients.     

Scaling function, anisotropy and the size of RVE in elastic random polycrystals

This article is focused on the identification of the size of the representative volume element (RVE) in linear elastic randomly structured polycrystals made up of cubic single crystals. The RVE is approached by setting up stochastic Dirichlet and Neumann boundary value problems consistent with the Hill(-Mandel) macrohomogeneity condition. Within this framework we introduce a scaling function that relates the single crystal anisotropy to the scale of observation. We derive certain exact characteristics of the scaling function and postulate others based on detailed calculations on copper, lithium, tantalum, magnesium oxide and antimony-yttrium. In deriving the above, we make use of the fact that cubic crystals and polycrystals have a uniquely determined scale-independent bulk modulus. It turns out that the scaling function is exact in the single crystal anisotropy. A methodology to develop a material selection diagram that clearly separates the microscale from the macroscale is proposed. The proposed scaling function not only bridges the length scales but also unifies the treatment of a wide spectrum of cubic crystals. Although the scope of this article is restricted to aggregates made up of cubic-shaped and cubic-symmetry single crystals, the concept of the scaling function can be generalized to other crystal shapes and classes as well as to scaling of other elastic/inelastic properties.     

Bounds on the elastic moduli of statistically isotropic multicomponent materials and random cell polycrystals

Minimum energy and complementary energy principles are used to derive the upper and lower bounds on the effective elastic moduli of statistically isotropic multicomponent materials in d ($d=2$ or 3) dimensions. The trial fields, involving harmonic and biharmonic potentials, and free parameters to be optimized, lead to the bounds containing, in addition to the properties and volume proportions of the material components, the three-point correlation information about the microgeometries of the composites. The relations and restrictions among the three-point correlation parameters are explored. The upper and lower bounds are specialized to symmetric cell materials and asymmetric multi-coated spheres, which are optimal or even converge in certain cases. New bounds for random cell polycrystals are constructed with particular results for random aggregates of cubic crystals.     

Estimation of overall properties of random polycrystals with the use of invariant decompositions of Hooke’s tensor

In the paper the theoretical analysis of bounds and self-consistent estimates of overall properties of linear random polycrystals composed of arbitrarily anisotropic grains is presented. In the study two invariant decompositions of Hooke’s tensors are used. The applied method enables derivation of novel expressions for estimates of the bulk and shear moduli, which depend on invariants of local stiffness tensor. With use of these expressions the materials are considered for which at the local level constraints are imposed on deformation or some stresses are unsustained.     

AN ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF SYMMETRICAL TILT GRAIN BOUNDARIES ON THE PLASTIC DEFORMATION

A numerical investigation on the simple polycrystals containing threesymmetrical tilt grain boundaries(GBs)is carried out within the framework of crystalplasticity which precisely considers the finite deformation and finite lattice rotation aswell as elastic anisotropy.The calculated results show that the slip geometry and theredistribution of stresses arising from the anisotropy and boundary constraint play animportant role in the plastic deformation in the simple polycrystals.The stress levelalong GB is sensitive to the load level and misorientation,and the stresses along GB aredistributed nonuniformly.The GB may exhibit a softening or strengthening feature,which depends on the misorientation angle.The localized deformation bands usuallydevelop accompanying the GB plastic deformation,the impingement of the localizedband on the GB may result in another localized deformation band.The yield stresseswith different misorientation angles are favorably compared with the experimentalresults.     

A self-consistent relation for the time-dependent creep of polycrystals

A self-consistent relation with a weakening constraint power in the matrix is derived for the primary and steady-state creep of polycrystals. This derivation makes use of a linear viscoelastic comparison material, under which the constraint power of the creeping matrix is found to decrease exponentially with the ratio of the elastic shear modulus to the secant creep modulus, or when expressed alternately, with the ratio of the creep strain to the elastic strain. Such a dramatic decrease leads one to believe that the overall creep strain of the polycrystal as calculated by the traditional elastic-constraint model could be far too low; a direct comparison between the two, however, quickly reveals that the accuracy of the elastic-constraint model is better than what is initially thought, and certainly far better than in the rate-independent plasticity. With this new relation, the creep heterogeneity among the constituent grains are then studied in details. It is demonstrated that while the creep strains of the more favorably oriented grains tend to increase, and those of the less favorably oriented ones decrease, their creep rates become virtually uniform during the long-term, steady-state creep. This suggests that grain compatibility, instead of stress equilibrium, is the more dominant factor governing the grain-boundary condition during the steady-state process.     

Bounds for the Effective Elastic Properties of Completely Random Planar Polycrystals

Bounds have been developed for the elastic moduli of completely random planar polycrystals, the shape and crystalline orientations of the constituent grains of which are supposed to be uncorrelated. Explicit results for the aggregates of orthotropic crystals are demonstrated. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Improved bounds for the elastic moduli of perfectly-random composites

New upper and lower bounds are constructed for the elastic moduli of a class of isotropic composites with perfectly-random microgeometries ([1–3]), which improve upon the bounds on the elastic shear modulus given in [1].     

CYCLIC HARDENING BEHAVIOR OF POLYCRYSTALS WITH PENETRABLE GRAIN BOUNDARIES： TWO-DIMENSIONAL DISCRETE DISLOCATION DYNAMICS SIMULATION

A two-dimensional discrete dislocation dynamics （DDD） technology by Giessen and Needleman （1995）, which has been extended by integrating a dislocation-grain boundary interaction model, is used to computationally analyze the micro-cyclic plastic response of polycrystals containing micron-sized grains, with special attentions to significant influence of dislocationpenetrable grain boundaries （GBs） on the micro-plastic cyclic responses of polycrystals and underlying dislocation mechanism. Toward this end, a typical polycrystalline rectangular specimen under simple tension-compression loading is considered. Results show that, with the increase of cycle accumulative strain, continual dislocation accumulation and enhanced dislocation-dislocation interactions induce the cyclic hardening behavior; however, when a dynamic balance among dislocation nucleation, penetration through GB and dislocation annihilation is approximately established, cyclic stress gradually tends to saturate. In addition, other factors, including the grain size, cyclic strain amplitude and its history, also have considerable influences on the cyclic hardening and saturation.     

Displacement fields and self-energies of circular and polygonal dislocation loops in homogeneous and layered anisotropic solids

There are large classes of materials problems that involve the solutions of stress, displacement, and strain energy of dislocation loops in elastically anisotropic solids, including increasingly detailed investigations of the generation and evolution of irradiation induced defect clusters ranging in sizes from the micro- to meso-scopic length scales. Based on a two-dimensional Fourier transform and Stroh formalism that are ideal for homogeneous and layered anisotropic solids, we have developed robust and computationally efficient methods to calculate the displacement fields for circular and polygonal dislocation loops. Using the homogeneous nature of the Green tensor of order −1, we have shown that the displacement and stress fields of dislocation loops can be obtained by numerical quadrature of a line integral. In addition, it is shown that the sextuple integrals associated with the strain energy of loops can be represented by the product of a pre-factor containing elastic anisotropy effects and a universal term that is singular and equal to that for elastic isotropic case. Furthermore, we have found that the self-energy pre-factor of prismatic loops is identical to the effective modulus of normal contact, and the pre-factor of shear loops differs from the effective indentation modulus in shear by only a few percent. These results provide a convenient method for examining dislocation reaction energetic and efficient procedures for numerical computation of local displacements and stresses of dislocation loops, both of which play integral roles in quantitative defect analyses within combined experimental–theoretical investigations.     

Intra-granular plastic slip heterogeneities: Discrete vs. Mean Field approaches

In this paper, we derive the mechanical fields (internal stresses, elastic energy) arising from the presence of an inelastic distortion field representing a typical intra-granular “microstructure” as the one observed during the plastification of metallic polycrystals. This “microstructure” is due to the formation of discrete intra-granular plastic slip heterogeneities characterized by at least two internal lengths: the first one is the individual grain size which represents a stochastic parameter inherent to the processing route (prior working, annealing), and, the second one is the spatial distance between active slip lines or slip bands associated with inhomogeneous plastic slip in the interior of grains. These internal lengths can be observed and measured using conventional experimental techniques (EBSD, TEM, AFM). The micro-mechanical modeling of the mechanical fields associated with plastic slip events inside grains is performed with two different assumptions. The first one is based on the well-known Eshelby’s problem of plastic inclusion where only the grain diameter is considered as internal length scale. This classical method considers homogeneous plastic distortion in the grain and leads to a uniform and grain size independent total strain field in the grain. The second method accounts for a non-uniform plastic distortion in the grain characterized by its discrete nature and the two aforementioned internal lengths. Both methods consider grains as spherical inclusions with a given diameter embedded in a homogeneous medium. For the second method, plastic slip is constrained by grain boundaries seen as impenetrable obstacles to dislocations. Thus, plastic strain is embodied by distributions of discrete circular glide loops. After writing the field equations and the free energy of the medium, a micro-mechanical formulation based on the Fourier transform method is developed. It is then found that in contrast with the mean-field approach, the internal stress fields as well as the elastic energy corresponding to different dislocation configurations depend on internal lengths associated to the deformed medium. Different possible configurations associated with intra-granular plastic flow due to circular glide dislocation loops are analyzed. Finally, the results are discussed with respect to the grain size dependence of the flow strength and the Bauschinger effect for plastically deforming polycrystals and perspectives to develop new micro–macro transition schemes accounting for internal length scales are sketched out.