Abnormal grain growth in ultrafine grained metals under high cycle loading

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NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARYMost technologically important metals are polycrystalline, and are made of many small clusters called grains. The size of these grains is a key parameter, as grain size has a strong influence on a material’s strength. The same metal is much stronger if its grains are smaller. For this reason, ultrafine grained metals, with grain sizes less than one micrometer, are a very important class of structural materials due to their particularly high strength, with critical applications in the aerospace and nuclear industry, among others. Another significant advantage of small grained metals is that they tend to have better fatigue properties and are less likely to form detrimental cracks under cyclic loading. It is therefore crucial to keep small grain sizes throughout the lifetime of an ultrafine grained structural metal; otherwise its mechanical properties can degrade catastrophically. In this project, the PIs are developing new understanding of the mechanics of grain growth, so that grain size can be properly controlled. The PIs focus specifically on abnormal grain growth, where a small fraction of grains grow drastically large and fast compared to other grains and as a result consume other grains. While this phenomenon is well understood at high temperatures and high strains, little is known about abnormal grain growth in the rarely explored range of high cycle loading (applying a large number of cycles with low strain at room temperature). The outreach activities in this project include a summer enrichment program in material science and engineering, targeting high school students from underrepresented groups in the STEM fields, and involving high school teachers, graduate and undergraduate students to develop the curriculum and implement the program. TECHNICAL SUMMARYThe overarching goal of this proposal is to achieve a fundamental understanding of the origins of abnormal grain growth in ultrafine grained metals under high-cycle loading at room temperature. The central hypothesis of this proposal is that the elastic anisotropy effect dominates the driving force for grain growth in the high-cycle loading regime at room temperature, resulting in abnormal grain growth behavior. The PIs test this hypothesis through high-throughput characterization of cyclic-load-induced grain growth in ultrafine grained metals inside a scanning electron microscope equipped with electron back scattered diffraction. Fabrication and testing of six different metallic films with varying degrees of elastic anisotropy, with face-centered cubic or body-centered cubic structures are the focus of the work. These experiments can characterize the evolution of grain size distribution and orientation as a function of applied cycles, for various strain amplitudes (up to 1%). The PIs use micromechanics and phase field modeling to determine the thermodynamic driving forces in terms of strain energy densities and the grain boundary mobilities for abnormal grain growth. The integrated experiments and modeling are being used to identify the predominant factors and loading ranges controlling abnormal grain growth, including its kinetics, in face-centered cubic and body-centered cubic metals at room temperature.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.