13.

Dislocations

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 Questions
• How does permanent deformation occur
and why do samples work harden?

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 Learning objectives
• Explain what a slip plane is
• Derive the resolved shear stress on a plane
• Describe what a dislocation is and how it
moves through a crystal
• Explain the relationship between
dislocations and work hardening

3
 Imperfections in Crystals
Vacancy

• Point Defects
– Vacancies
– Interstitial
• All crystals have equilibrium
concentrations of vacancies Interstitial

  Qv 
N v  N exp 
 RT 
Nv – number of vacancies per unit volume
N – number of atoms per unit volume As T increases, Nv increases
Qv – activation energy for vacancy formation
Just below melting point,
Nv/N ~ 10-4, (1 in 10,000)
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 Effect of Vacancies
• Allows atoms to move in the
solid
• Process is known as
“diffusion”
• Plays an important role in
– Creep
– Recrystallization
– Grain Growth
– Phase transformations
• Allows atoms to re-arrange
themselves to obtain lower
energy configurations

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Plastic Deformation at the Atomic Level

• When a polished metal

surface is plastically
deformed, “slip lines”
appear on the surface
• These slip lines indicate
that atoms are shearing
across each other
• This shear occurs on
specific atomic planes

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 Slip in a Single Crystal
• The orientation of the
crystal was chosen
such that slip would
occur.

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Slip in an Aluminum Single Crystal

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 Slip in Polycrystalline Materials
• Because of random
crystallographic orientations
of the grains
– Direction of slip varies from
grain to grain
– For each grain, deformation
occurs along the slip system
that has the most favourable
orientation
Copper sample

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 Slip Planes
• For example, in an FCC
unit cell
– Slip occurs on the (111)
plane (ABDEFC)
– There are three <110>
type slip directions
• This is called the
{111}<110> slip system

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Orientation of Slip Planes
The ‘resolved’ shear
stress on a given slip
plane leads to slip and
thus plastic deformation

 R   cos  cos 
R – resolved shear stress
 – applied stress
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 Slip Systems for Different Crystal
Structures

• FCC and BCC crystal structures have a relatively large number of slip
systems, so they are quite ductile. Conversely, HCP structures can be
quite brittle.
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Breaking of atomic Bonds

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Breaking of atomic Bonds

Maximum force for

spacing of 1.25ro
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 The stress needed for plastic
deformation
• To simultaneously break all the atomic bonds on a slip
plane requires a very high stress
E For steel, E=210 GPa
 theoretical  So th ~ 21000 MPa!!
10
But in Lab #1,
y for mild steel ~ 200-300 MPa

y for piano wire ~ 3000 MPa

This calculation was first
WHY SO MUCH LOWER?? done in the 1930s

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 Line Defects (Dislocations) in Crystal
Structures
• “Edge Dislocations”
– Defect in the crystal structure
which results from the presence
of an extra half plane
– This means that significantly
lower stress is required to get slip
– Only one atomic plane must be
moved at at time
• Dislocations were postulated in
1930’s as the mechanism to
explain why yield stresses are
so low
– 20 years before they were
observed experimentally!

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Permanent Deformation by
dislocation motion

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Analogies for Dislocation Motion

Caterpillar analogy

Carpet analogy

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 Edge Dislocation - Details
In simple cubic structure
• Burgers vector – defined by = lattice parameter
“magnitude and direction of
the lattice distortion associated
with a dislocation”
– Equivalent to the unit of slip
caused by the motion of a
dislocation from one side of
the crystal to the other
– For an edge dislocation, the
Burgers vector is
perpendicular to the
dislocation line; the
combination of these two
define the “slip plane”
– An edge dislocation moves in a
direction parallel to the shear
stress and the Burgers vector

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Permanent Deformation by
dislocation motion

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 Screw Dislocations
• The Burgers vector is
parallel to the
dislocation line
– No specific slip plane is
defined
• A screw dislocation
moves in a direction
perpendicular to the
applied shear stress

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 Seeing Dislocations
Titanium alloy
• Dislocations can be observed
in a transmission electron
microscope
–First seen in 1950s

• Dislocations are not usually

present as straight lines, but
usually have complicated
shapes
• Generally ‘mixed’
dislocations
~ 1 mm
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 Disruption in a Crystal
• The disruption of the crystal by the
dislocation causes elastic stress and
strain fields around the dislocation
– Elastic energy is associated with stress
fields
• Edge dislocations have tensile
stresses below the half plane and
compressive stresses above the half
plane
• Screw dislocations have shear stress
fields around them

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 General Characteristics
• Dislocations cannot end within a crystal or grain, but only at grain
boundaries or at a free surface
• In an annealed (not strain-hardened) material, there will be 1010
meter of dislocation line in 1 cubic meter of material
– Alternatively, think of this as: in 1 cm3, there are 10 km of dislocation
lines!
– This is impressive, but it still means that 99.999% of the atoms are in
perfect position
• We define the dislocation density r as:

r= Total length of dislocation line

Units are m/m3
volume

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 Cold Working (Strain Hardening)

• For plastic deformation to occur,

dislocations must move
• Dislocations interact with each other
on the same slip plane or on other
parallel or non-parallel slip planes to
make motion more difficult
– It becomes increasingly more difficult for
the dislocations to move because of the
interaction between themselves
– The stress to continue deformation must
rise, i.e. work hardening

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 Cold Working (Strain Hardening)

• New dislocations are created in the

crystal so that deformation may
continue r = 105 km/cm3

– Dislocation density increases

– Stress increases i.e. strain hardening

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 Cold Working (cont.)
• Internal energy = energy per unit
length of dislocation multiplied by
r = 105 km/cm3
the dislocation density
• This increase in the internal energy
is the driving force for
recrystallization
• Dislocations are removed from the
crystal during recrystallization
• Annealed material
– r = 1010 m/m3
• Cold worked material
– r = 1014 m/m3
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 Recrystallization
New “strain free” (i.e. dislocation free) grains
nucleate at grain boundaries

Deformed grains
r = 105 km/cm3

The recrystallized grains are much softer (lower yield

strength) because they have a lower dislocation density
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 Questions
• How does permanent deformation occur
and why do samples work harden?

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 Learning objectives
• Explain what a slip plane is
• Derive the resolved shear stress on a plane
• Describe what a dislocation is and how it
moves through a crystal
• Explain the relationship between
dislocations and work hardening

30
 Problem 7.33

7.33 Experimentally, it has been observed for single crystals of a number of metals that the critical resolved shear
stress τcrss is a function of the dislocation density ρD as
t crss = t 0 + A rD
where τ0 and A are constants. For copper, the critical resolved shear stress is 0.69 MPa (100 psi) at a dislocation
density of 104 mm–2. If it is known that the value of τ0 for copper is 0.069 MPa (10 psi), compute τcrss at a dislocation
density of 106 mm–2.

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