On the influence of the grain boundary misorientation on the plastic deformation of aluminum bicrystals Original Research Article

Aluminum bicrystals with symmetric 〈1 1 2〉 tilt boundaries and misorientations of 8.7° (small angle), 15.4° (transition), and 31.5° (large angle) were deformed in a channel die experiment in order to study the influence of misorientation on the deformation at grain boundaries. Samples were characterized by strain measurements and microtexture mappings. The experiments were compared to crystal plasticity finite element simulations. We studied strain heterogeneity at the macroscopic and at the microscopic level. Even macroscopically homogeneous areas showed microscopic heterogeneity in the form of bands of different sets of glide systems. We observed clear effects of the grain boundary misorientation on the deformation kinematics close to the boundaries. The 8.7° grain boundary did not show any orientation change which was interpreted in terms of free dislocation penetration. In contrast, the 15.4° and 31.5° bicrystals showed orientation changes which were attributed to dislocation pile-ups.