Lecture 7

Beyond Elasticity:
Plasticity, yielding and
ductility

Jayant Jain

Assistant Professor,
Department of Applied Mechanics,
IIT Delhi, Hauz Khas, 110016

Yielding
Yield strength is the stress beyond
which a material becomes
plastic deformation is permanent
Determined by standard tensile testing procedures

Units
MPa MN/m2
psi lb/in2

1 MPa = 145.04 psi

Materials: engineering, science, processing and design, 2nd edition Copyright (c)2010 Michael Ashby, Hugh Shercliff, David Cebon

Stress-Strain Curve: Metal

Yield strength y is defined by
a 0.2% offset from the linear
elastic region

When strained beyond y, most

metals work harden, causing the
rising part of the curve
Maximum stress is defined as the
tensile strength ts
Figure 6.1

Materials: engineering, science, processing and design, 2nd edition Copyright (c)2010 Michael Ashby, Hugh Shercliff, David Cebon

Plastic deformation in crystalline

Solids
How the permanent deformations
are generated in solids??

Theoretical shear strength

Lets estimate the theoretical value of
stress required to shear the atoms

Theoretical shear strength

Shear stress
a

Shearing stress ()

Plastic deformation of a crystal by shear

m

Sinusoidal
relationship
Real curve may
have trend like
this

Displacement

Theoretical shear strength

As a first approximation the
stress-displacement curve can be
written as

2x
m Sin

At small values of displacement

Hookes law should apply

x
G G
a

For small values of x/b

2x
m

Hence the maximum shear

stress at which slip should occur
If b ~ a

G b
m
2 a
G
m
2

Theoretical shear strength

Theoretical strength of crystal is fraction of shear modulus
The shear modulus of metals is in the range 20 150 GPa

G
2

The theoretical shear stress

will be in the range 3 30 GPa

Actual shear stress is 0.5 10 MPa

i.e. (Shear stress)theoretical > 100 * (Shear stress)experimental

!!!!

Real crystals are significantly

weaker than what is predicted
from the model
Why???
This can be explained by
Dislocations in crystals

Concept of dislocation
In 1934 Taylor, Orowan and Polanyi postulated the
presence of dislocations as a mechanism of weakening of a
crystal.

Concept of dislocation
They showed that atom bond breakage on the
slip plane could be restricted to the immediate
vicinity of the bottom edge of the half plane
As the dislocation moves through the crystal
bond breakage across the slip plane occurs
consecutively rather than simultaneously as was
the case in perfect crystal

Energy required to break one bond as opposed

to energy required to break all bonds at once!!!

Some facts about Dislocation

Dislocations are 1D (line) defects, which play an important role in a variety
of deformation processes (such as creep, fatigue and fracture) of a crystal.
Dislocations form by mis-stacking of atoms. Typical alloys contain the order
of 100,000 km of dislocation lines per cubic cm.
Dislocations facilitate deformation, and their creation and motion on crystal
planes causes yielding and permanent deformation.
Dislocations exist in almost all crystalline solids, typically introduced
during solidification or deformation.
They create lattice distortion around the
dislocation. Atoms are rearranged as the
dislocation moves through the crystal.

Dislocation

Lattice defect is caused by

introduction of an extra half plane
of atoms
Insertion of extra half plane has
perturbed the lattice
Dislocation line is defined as the
edge of the half plane

Stress field around dislocation

Compressive stress field at top

half of lattice
Tensile stress field at bottom
half of lattice

Dislocation width

Width of dislocation is strong function of nature of bonding

Covalently bonded material narrow width, Metallic bonded
material wide width

Lattice resistance: Peierls stress

Peierls-Nabarro stress (P-N stress): Minimum shear stress
required to move dislocations through a crystal lattice

PN G e

2w

How width of dislocation affects friction stress

Width of the dislocation is considered as a basis for the

ease of motion of a dislocation in the model which is a
function of the bonding in the material.

2a

p exp
b1

Larger a, lower

Smaller b, lower p

a = distance between slip planes

b= distance between equilibrium position of atoms