Twinning behavior of pure magnesium quantitatively investigated by acoustic emission

We used acoustic emission to quantitatively investigate the effects of grain size and strain rate on the twinning behavior of pure magnesium during compression. In a sample with a grain size of 35 μm and a strain rate of 1.67 × 10−4 s−1, the true strain dependence of the twinning size distribution showed that twins form within a grain below a strain of approximately 0.5% and propagate to adjacent grains at higher strain levels. The twinning strain ɛtw, which is the strain associated with the twin formation, was calculated by considering the variation in the Schmidt factor during the deformation process. An exponential relation was determined between ɛtw and the cumulative AE counts (N) for samples with different grain sizes and strain rates at the initial stage of the compression process.