Orientation Dependent Hardening by <001> Rod-Shaped Misfitting Precipitates in Aluminium Alloys

Abstract

A coherent precipitate formed in a metallic alloy is of importance in its strengthening mechanism, owing to dislocation/precipitate interaction. Therefore, the present study investigated the effect of rod-shaped precipitates on misfit hardening in aluminium alloys by means of parametric dislocation dynamics simulation based on Green’s function method. The simulation results revealed that the topological evolution of the dislocation microstructure is greatly influenced by local internal stress around the rod precipitate. The strong orientation dependence of misfit hardening was observed for the gradients of the stress–strain curves and their maximum shear stresses, where the difference in the maximum stress values amounted to 30%. The strong and weak hardening behaviours associated with the internal stress of rod precipitates were implemented in terms of the energy associated with the dislocation motion.

Keywords

• aluminium alloys
• precipitation strengthening
• dislocation dynamics
• Eshelby inclusion theory
• micromechanics
• Green’s function