Experimental micromechanics of materials is a branch of science that seeks to build tight connections between composition, structure, processing and performance of materials under specific operating conditions required for particular technology applications. The present project is focused on the development of techniques that use the combination of electron, ion and X-ray microscopies to study the deformation behaviour of a particularly important class of metallic alloys used in the manufacture of aeroengines, namely, the so-called Ni-base superalloys. The complex hierarchical structure of these materials means that their macroscopic response is controlled to a great extent by the phenomena that play out on very fine scales, from angstroms (lattice spacing dimension) to nanometres (precipitates, phase boundaries, dislocations, chemical inhomogeneities) to microns (grains and their boundaries, defects and their clusters, dislocation pileups) to millimetres (component scale). Understanding the fine structure and deformation behaviour requires the development of specially configured experimental setup that allow the observation and quantification of deformation to external loading. In this study, FIB-SEM methods for sample characterization and fabrication were combined with synchrotron-based X-ray diffraction and imaging techniques, and backed up by theoretical analysis and numerical simulation, to elucidate the origins of the strength of these alloys. Micropillar compression tests using in-SEM nanoindentation were used to reveal the size dependence of the apparent strength, and connection was made with the dislocation-mediated crystal slip to provide an explanation of the observed Hall-Petch type dependence with a modified Hall-Petch equation considering both intrinsic and extrinsic characteristic lengths introduced. X-ray scattering was used in the polychromatic micro-Laue mode and using Bragg coherent diffractive imaging to reveal the crystal distortion arising due to plastic deformation. A Discrete dislocation dynamics in the 2.5D formulation was used to obtain a model description of the observed phenomena. The key outcome of the work presented in this thesis lies in the successful development of advanced observational tools and relevant theoretical or computational models for mesoscale plasticity problems for crystal with complex microstructure.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:748834 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Ying, Siqi |
| Contributors | Korsunsky, Alexander M. ; Tan, Jin-Chong |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9d636959-b59d-4e00-adf4-357b6b6c88af |
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