The Portevin-le Chatelier effect in a copper-3.2 at.% tin alloy has been used to investigate the rate of vacancy production during reversed plastic flow. The production rate per unit strain has been shown to be approximately half the value found for straight tensile deformation. It was inferred from this that fatigue is not a highly efficient method for producing vacancies. The relationship between the dislocation density and the tensile plastic strain for this alloy has been determined by transmission electron microscopy. It was found to obey the law, p = const. E^1.17±0.13. It was also found that during reversed plastic flow this law was no longer valid. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Indentation hardness, H, has been widely used to characterize the mechanical properties of materials for more than a century because of the following advantages of this technique; (1) it requires small sample and (2) the test is non destructive in nature. Recent technological advances helped in the development of instrumented indentation machines which can record the load, P, vs. displacement, h, data continuously during indentation with excellent load and displacement resolutions. From these, H and the elastic modulus, E, of the indented material can be obtained on the basis of the ‘contact area’ of the indentation at the maximum load. The estimation of true contact area becomes difficult during ‘pile-up’ and ‘sink-in’, commonly observed phenomena while indentation of a low and high strain hardened materials. In order for the better understanding of these phenomena it is important to understand the plastic flow distribution under indenters. It is also important for the prediction of elastic-plastic properties from the P-h data. Recently, there have been considerable theoretical and simulation efforts on this front with a combination of dimensional analysis and finite element simulations. One of the important input parameter for the dimensional analysis is the ‘representative strain’ under the indenter, which is a strong function of the indenter geometry. However there is no comprehensive understanding of the representative strain under the indenter despite several studies till date. One objective of the present thesis is to conduct an experimental analysis of the plastic flow during the sharp indentation. The plastic zone size and shape under conical indenters of different apex angles in a pure and annealed copper were examined by employing the subsurface indentation technique to generate the hardness map. From these isostrain contours are constructed joining the data having similar strain values. The following are the key observations. (1) The plastic strain contours are elliptical in nature, spreading more along the direction of the indenter axis than the lateral direction. (2) The magnitude of the plastic strain in the contact region decreases with increasing the indenter angle. (3) The strain decay in the indentation direction follow a power-law relation with the distance. The estimated representative strains under the indenters, computed as the volume average strain within the elastic-plastic boundary, decreases with increasing indenter angle. We also performed finite element simulations to generate plastic flow distribution under the indenter geometries and compared with the experimental results. The results suggest that the experimental and computed average strains match well. However, the plastic strain contours do not, suggesting that further detailed understanding of the elasto-plastic deformation underneath the sharp indenter is essential before reliable estimates of plastic properties from the P-h curves can be made routinely. The second objective of this thesis is to understand plastic flow in amorphous alloys. It is now well established that plastic deformation in metallic glasses is pressure sensitive, owing to the fundamentally different mechanisms vis-à-vis the dislocation mediated plastic flow in crystalline metals alloys. Early work has shown that the pressure sensitivity of amorphous alloys gets reflected as high constraint factor, C (hardness to yield stress ratio), which sometimes exceed 3.0. In this thesis, we study the temperature dependence of pressure sensitive plastic flow in bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) using C as the proxy for the pressure sensitivity. Experiments on three different BMGs show that C increases with temperature hence the pressure sensitivity. In addition we have carried out finite element simulations to generate P-h curves for different levels of pressure sensitivities and match them with the experimental curves that are obtained at different temperatures. Simulations predict that higher pressure sensitivity index values are required to match the experimental curves at high temperatures confirming that the pressure sensitivity increases with increasing temperature. The fundamental mechanisms responsible for the increase in pressure sensitivity are discussed in detail. Finally we pose a question, is the increase in pressure sensitivity with temperature is common to other amorphous materials such as strong amorphous polymers? In order to answer this question we have chosen PMMA, a strong amorphous polymer. In this study also we have taken C as a proxy to index the pressure sensitivity. Indentation stress-strain curves are constructed at different temperature using spherical indentation experiments. The C values corresponding to different temperatures are determined and plotted as a function of temperature. It is found that C increases with temperature implying that the pressure sensitivity of amorphous polymers also increases with temperature. The micro-mechanisms responsible for the increase in pressure sensitivity are sought.

In this study, a novel inserted type of friction welding tool was proposed, where the circular rod was embedded in its central axis using the material same as the workpiece, so that it could effectively promote the friction heat quickly and enhance the welding quality. The welding tool was made of the high-speed steel, the workpiece with its embedded material 6061-T6 aluminum alloy. A vertical milling machine equipped with dynamometer, which could measure the power during the friction stir welding, was employed as the experimental apparatus. During the welding process, the K-type thermocouple was used simultaneously in measuring the welding temperature at the interface of joint. The operating conditions of welding were as followings: the welding speed of 800 rpm, the tool inclination of 1¢X and the clamping force 2kN, the tool with 12mm in diameter and 0.21mm in depth under the downward force about 2 kN. The experiment was conducted into two stages. The first stage was a spot welding to investigate the effect of the ratio of the diameter of embedded material (d) to the diameter of welding tool (D) on the temperature of the interface of joint, the thickness of plastic flow, and the failure load of weld. Experimental results revealed that the interface temperature, the plastic flow thickness, and the failure load of weld are directly proportional to d/D. In comparison with the welding tool without insert (d/D = 0), the maximum interface temperature increased about 1.12 times at d/D = 0.83, the plastic flow thickness increased about 1.52 times, and the failure load of weld increased about 1.45 times. In the second stage, the feeding process was included to investigate the influence of the diameter and the thickness of embedded material on the interface temperature, the plastic flow thickness, and the failure load of weld. Experimental results revealed that the plastic flow thickness was less than 2 mm when the thickness of embedded material was less than 3 mm. However, when the thickness of embedded material was larger than 5 mm, the plastic flow thickness could achieve to 3 mm. Hence, the thickness of embedded material should be larger than 5mm. Moreover, the effect of the diameter of embedded material on the interface temperature and the plastic flow thickness using the feeding process was almost the same as the spot welding. However, in comparison with the welding tool without insert, the failure load of weld increased about two times.

L’Analyse Linéaire de Stabilité a été largement utilisée afin de décrire l’évolution du mode dominant des instabilités pour différentes configurations. Toutefois, plusieurs observations expérimentales et numériques ont démontré l’existence de distributions de longueurs inter-strictions, prémices aux distributions de tailles de fragments. Une extension de cette utilisation classique de l’Analyse Linéaire de Stabilité dédiée à l’extension d’un barreau en traction a été proposée afin de rendre compte de la contribution de l’ensemble des modes de perturbation sur le profil final des strictions. Cette approche, correspondant physiquement au cas des anneaux fins en expansion, est à même de déterminer une distribution de longueurs inter-strictions. En se basant sur les mêmes outils mathématiques que ceux ayant permis d’étendre l’analyse linéaire de stabilité, une nouvelle approche numérique a été suivie afin de déterminer le temps d’apparition et le nombre de strictions en fonction de la vitesse de chargement, de l’amplitude et de la taille de cellules de perturbations. Une comparaison, en termes de distribution de longueurs inter-strictions, a été par la suite obtenue entre résultats analytiques et numériques. De bonnes corrélations ont été observées. Le développement d’un montage expérimental d’expansion d’anneaux par forces électromagnétiques a été entamé au cours de ce travail de thèse. Lors de sa finalisation, il devrait permettre une validation expérimentale des approches développées dans les domaines numériques et analytiques / Linear Stability Analysis has been widely used in order to describe the evolution of the dominant necking pattern in different configurations. However, experimental and numerical observations have demonstrated that a distribution of internecking lengths is obtained instead of a unique dominant pattern. In this work, an extension of the classical Linear Stability Analysis applied to the dynamic extension of a round bar case has been developed to take into account the contribution of all perturbation modes on the final necking pattern. This approach, corresponding physically to the case of thin ring expansion, is able to determine a distribution on internecking distances. Based on the same mathematical tools that was developed for the extension of the linear stability analysis, a new numerical approach has been followed to determine the number and the onset time of necking with respect to loading velocity, amplitude and cell size of the perturbations. A comparison, in terms of distributions of inter-necking distance, has been carried out between analytical and numerical results. Good correlations have been observed. An electromagnetic ring expansion experimental device has been proposed during this work. Whith some additional development, it should enable to validate experimentally the working assumptions developed in the numerical and analytical studies

Étant donné que le stockage de gaz naturel ou d’air comprimé dans des niveaux souterrains constitués de sel joue un rôle essentiel pour assurer l'approvisionnement en énergie sur le long terme, le gouvernement chinois a construit de nombreux lieu de stockage dans ces niveaux géologiques ces dernières années. En raison des variations saisonnières de la pression gaz / air, les entrepôts subissent des chargements cycliques qui provoquent la fatigue des roches et conduisent à des risques de rupture qu’il faut maîtriser pour des raisons liées à la sécurité et à l'environnement. La compréhension des processus de fatigue discontinue du sel sous chargement cyclique est donc très importante et fait l'objet de cette étude, qui se concentre sur des recherches expérimentales et le développement de modèles constitutifs décrivant la déformation sous fatigue. Cette thèse s’articule suivant la méthodologie suivante : ① des essais de chargement cyclique classique pour étudier les propriétés basiques de la fatigue dans le sel. ② des tests de charge cyclique discontinu pour explorer les processus de fatigue discontinue. ③ l’instrumentation pour détecter les émissions acoustiques afin de suivre l'évolution des dommages causés par la fatigue dans le sel. ④ Le développement à la base des résultats expérimentaux obtenus de modèle constitutif pour la fatigue discontinue. / Since the salt cavern storage of natural gas and compressed air plays a critical role in ensuring the energy supply and adjusting the seasonal imbalance of power, China government has been constructing numerous new storages in recent years. Because of the seasonal of the seasonal variations of the gas/air pressure, the storages undergo cyclic loading, which causes rock fatigue and induces the associated safety and environmental hazards. The investigation of the discontinuous fatigue of salt under cyclic loading is therefore very important and is the subject of this study, which focuses on the experimental investigations and the development of the constitutive models describing the fatigue deformation. This thesis includes the following principal parts: ① Conventional cyclic loading testing to investigate the basic properties of fatigue in salt. ② Discontinuous cyclic loading tests testing to investigate the discontinuous fatigue. ③ Acoustic emission detecting experimentation to track the evolution of the fatigue damage in the salt. ④ Development of the fatigue life model and constitutive model for the discontinuous fatigue, based on the obtained experimental results.

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