On grain boundary facetting under stress during high temperature deformation of Al and Al-Ga alloys

Aluminuim of high purity and aluminium with 50 ppm gallium were deformed under various strain rates and temperatures in order to investigate the possible influence of liquid like grain boundaries on grain boundary sliding and macroscopic deformation behaviour. Under all conditions, serrated grain boundaries were observed to develop during the tensile test. Those serrated structures were correlated to the development of subgrains observed by optical metallography and transmission electron microscopy. In the absence of an applied stress, further annealing lead to disappearing of the serrated grain boundaries when the annealing temperature was higher than the tensile test temperature under which the serrations were developed.