Nanocrystalline aluminum and iron: Mechanical behavior at quasi-static and high strain rates, and constitutive modeling

The responses of nanocrystalline aluminum powder of different grain sizes, prepared by ball milling and consolidated into bulk specimens by hot pressing, were determined under quasi-static and dynamic compression. The experiments demonstrated that the reduction in grain size resulted in several-fold increase in hardness and strength; the responses of nanocrystalline aluminum was found to be strain-rate-dependent. Using these measurements, Khan, Huang and Liang (KHL) viscoplastic model was modified by including a bi-linear Hall–Petch type relation to correlate with the response of nanocrystalline aluminum, including the variation of work hardening with grain size. The modified constitutive equation gives results very close to the experimental observations on nanocrystalline aluminum. In addition, the response of nanocrystalline iron, previously published, was also correlated with proposed model. Both correlations of strain-rate-dependent responses for different grain sizes were in good agreement with the experimental results over a wide range of grain sizes (micrometer to nanometer) and strain rates.