Probabilistic nature of the nucleation of dislocations in an applied stress field》.pdf

Scripta Materialia 54 (2006) 589–593 Probabilistic nature of the nucleation of dislocations in an applied stress field A.H.W. Ngan *, L. Zuo, P.C. Wo Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, PR China Received 29 June 2005; received in revised form 17 October 2005; accepted 21 October 2005 Available online 10 November 2005 Abstract The nucleation of dislocations under applied stress exhibits significant statistical scatter, as well as time and size dependence. In this work, a general probabilistic theory is proposed to explain these. The predicted survival probability under nanoindentation loading is found to be in excellent agreement with experimental results in Ni3Al. 2005 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Nanoindentation; Yield phenomena; Plastic deformation; Statistical mechanics; Size effect 1. Introduction Before the high strengths of submicron materials can be fully utilized in designing micro-machines, one must pay At present, there is a great deal of interest in designing attention to their significant statistical scatter and time- nano- and micro-machinery for applications in different dependence of the measurements. Using the nanoindenta- fields, ranging from miniaturized inertial sensors and tion technique, significant statistical s