Institute of Metals Division - Mechanisms of Work Hardening in Columbium

The magnitude and variation with strain of the parameters activation volume, V*; activation energy, H; and frequency factor, A, in the Arrhenius equation for strain rate are determined for colunlbium single crystals and polycrgstals. Comparison of dislocation structures in deformed columbium crystals as determined by transmission electron microscopy with the rate IF deformation of a metal crystal is a thermally activated process, rate theory can be used as a powerful tool in the study of dislocation mechanisms. seeger1 develops the following expression for plastic deformation governed by a single thermally-activated theory results suggests thai formation of lattice vacancies at jogs in screw dislocations is responsible for thermally activated deformation of poly crystalline columbium. Single crystals appear to deform by a different mechanism. Work hardening in fully recrystallized fine grain columbium is found to result from simultaneous decrease in activation volume and in the number of mobile dislocations with increasing strain. Work hardening in recovered polycrystals is found to result from decrease in activation volume with strain only. dislocation mechanism. His equation for strain rate is where N is the number of mobile dislocations per unit volume held up at energy barriers, v is the frequency with which the dislocations "try" the energy barriers, b is the Burgers vector, a is the area a dislocation loop sweeps out after overcoming a barrier, V* is the activation volume which will be defined more completely later, and t* is the thermal component of stress equal to (Ta-Ti), where Ta is applied shear stress and Ti is internal stress of the dislocation network17' given by