摘要
This work outlines an experimental investigation of grain-size-dependent structure evolution under tension in nickel with a grain size gradient.Two opposite and competing processes,grain refinement and coarsening,were examined within one specimen,due to the widely ranging grain size in gradient-structured(GS)Ni.A tensioninduced minimum grain size of approximately 280 nm was determined in GS Ni,which is comparable to those obtained by severe plastic deformation processes.The minimum grain size was phenomenologically explained using a dislocation model.Below the minimum grain size,the Ni’s grain coarsening ability peaked at approximately 50 nm and progressively decreased with decreasing grain size,showing an inverse grain-size-dependent coarsening tendency.Moreover,this inverse grain coarsening behavior was related to a transition in the deformation mechanism,through which the deformation process was accommodated more by partial dislocation than by full dislocation below a critical grain size.This was confirmed by observation of the microstructure and low temperature tensile testing results.This work demonstrates a high-throughput strategy for exploring the minimum grain size and grain-size-dependent coarsening in metals.
基金
financial support received from the National Key Research and Development Program of China(Grant no.2017YFB0702003)
the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant no.51471165).