松永 哲也

Even at ambient temperature or less, below their 0.2% proof stresses all hexagonal close-packed metals and alloys show creep behaviour because they have dislocation arrays lying on a single slip system with no tangled dislocation inside each grain. In this case, lattice dislocations move without obstacles and pile-up in front of a grain boundary. Then these dislocations must be accommodated at the grain boundary to continue creep deformation. Atomic force microscopy revealed the occurrence of grain boundary sliding (GBS) in the ambient-temperature creep region. Lattice rotation of 5 degrees was observed near grain boundaries by electron backscatter diffraction pattern analyses. Because of an extra low apparent activation energy of 20 kJ/mol, conventional diffusion processes are not activated. To accommodate these piled-up dislocations without diffusion processes, lattice dislocations must be absorbed by grain boundaries through a slip-induced GBS mechanism.

This paper reports creep tests on three kinds of polycrystalline hexagonal close-packed metals, i.e. commercially pure titanium, pure magnesium, and pure zinc, in the vicinity of ambient temperature even below their 0.2% proof stresses. These materials showed significant steady state creep rates around 10-9 s(-1) and had stress exponents of about 3.0. Arrhenius plots in the vicinity of ambient temperature indicate extremely low apparent activation energies. Q, of about 20 kJ/mol, which is at least one-fourth of the Q of dislocation-core diffusion. Ambient-temperature creep also has a grain-size effect with an exponent of 1.0. These parameters indicate that ambient-temperature creep is a new creep deformation mechanism in h.c.p. materials. [doi:10.2320/matertrans.M2009223]

Intragranular deformation mechanisms were investigated for ambient-temperature creep of pure hexagonal close-packed (h.c.p.) metals. i.e. commercially pure titanium, pure magnesium and pure zinc, by transmission electron microscopy and electron back-scatter diffract ion pattern mapping analysis. First, straightly aligned dislocation arrays were observed in all of the specimens. Second, although the Burgers vectors of (a) and several slip systems were observed, only one slip system was activated inside of each grain. Third, the deformation twins that form during creep hinder creep strain. Therefore, the dominant intragranular deformation mechanism of ambient-temperature, creep is a planner slip of dislocations inside of a grain. [doi: 10.2320/matertrans.M2009224]

The suppressing effect of ambient-temperature creep of CP-Ti by cold-rolling was reported. Annealed plates of CP-Ti grade 2 were cold-rolled with thickness reductions, and then creep tests under the applied stresses of 0.6-0-9 sigma(0.2) were performed at ambient temperature. With increasing the thickness reduction, the twin, dislocation density and sigma(0.2) were found to increase. At the same time, the steady-state creep rates under the applied stress for constant sigma/sigma(0.2) were decreased. The cold-rolled sample with 20% thickness reduction was then annealed at 813 K for 2400 s to decrease only the dislocation density. After the annealing, the steady-state creep rate remained constant, suggesting that the reduction of the steady-state creep is associated with the increasing twin density. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The role of grain boundaries (GBs) for ambient-temperature creep of h.c.p. metals was investigated using pure Zn with several grain sizes. To reveal the relaxation mechanism of ambient-temperature creep, scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy were performed to evaluate the amount of grain boundary sliding. Grain orientation variations were then measured using electron backscatter diffraction to investigate a lattice rotation after ambient-temperature creep. The results obtained by these experiments are as follows: (I) Strong grain size dependency, i.e. larger grain size showed lower total true strain. This is different from high temperature dislocation creep. (2) Grain boundary steps of a few tenths of a micrometer gave evidence of grain boundary sliding during ambient-temperature creep. (3) Lattice rotation of a few degrees was observed near GBs, which indicates that dislocations piled up at GBs. (4) Grain boundary sliding is considered as accommodation process of piled-up dislocations with an apparent activation energy of 18 kJ/mol. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.