Effects of intergrain sliding on crack growth in nanocrystalline materials (Q655221)

The paper suggests theoretical models describing the toughening of nanostructured materials through non-accommodated and accommodated intergrain sliding processes at low and intermediate temperatures, respectively. The non-accommodated intergrain sliding processes influence the crack growth in nanocrystalline materials due to generation of triple junction dislocations whose stress fields release high local stresses near crack tips. The accommodated intergrain sliding also causes the blunting of cracks tips hampering crack growth. In consideration of non-accommodated intergrain sliding, the authors study the situation when triple junction dislocations generated due to intergrain sliding are immobile non-crystallographic Volterra dislocations, i.e., when the Peierls stress for lattice dislocation slip is very high, and strain occurs at low homologous temperature at which grain boundary (GB) dislocations are suppressed. The developed analytical model shows that the triple junction dislocation in this case creates a stress field that relieves the high local stress concentration near the crack tip. It is shown that the non-accommodated intergrain sliding increases the fracture toughness by 10-30\% in nanocrystalline Al, Ni and 3C-SiC. In the case of intermediate temperature, as shown in the paper, the intergrain sliding is effectively accommodated by diffusion-controlled climb of grain boundary dislocations and dislocation emission to the grain interior. It is shown in the framework of the developed analytical model that the accommodated intergrain sliding is capable of causing significant blunting of cracks in nanocrystalline materials, increasing by a factor ranging from 1.1 up to around 3 depending on the temperature and on the fracture toughness hampering crack growth. The considered effect of the accommodate intergrain sliding is inherent to nanocrystalline materials and does not operate in coarse-grain polycrystals. Besides the consideration of the sensitivity of fracture toughness of metals and ceramics to their grain size, the authors also discuss the influence of non-equilibrium GBs on the toughness of nanocrystalline metals.