Cyclic deformation of ultrafine-grained aluminum Original Research Article

Cyclic deformation of ultrafine-grained (UFG) Al with different grain sizes has been studied. It was found that UFG Al had shorter fatigue life than its coarse-grained counterparts. For UFG Al, the fatigue life decreases with decreasing grain size. Shear bands (SBs) shorten fatigue life. SBs are always inclined at 45° to the loading axis, and extend across the whole specimen. A SB is a thin sheet of tangled dislocations that have different Burgers vectors; its thickness is much less than the grain size. The strain–stress field inside a SB is very high. SBs produce shear steps, but not surface extrusions/intrusions, on the specimen surface. Thick shear bands (TSBs), about 200–300 μm, were found in the 6.36 μm grain size specimens, which also inclined 45° to the loading axis. TSBs consist of dislocation cells. The formation of TSBs does not reduce the fatigue life.