Effect of Grain Size on Superplastic Deformation of Metallic Materials

The superplastic deformation exhibited by metals with different grain sizes and their corresponding deformation mechanism influences the industrial metal-forming processes. The coarse-grained materials, which contain grain size greater than 20 μ m, exhibited superplastic deformation at high homologous temperature and low strain rate of the order of 10 − 4 s − 1 . Fine grain materials (1–20 μ m) are generally considered as favorable for superplastic deformation. They possess high-strain-rate sensitivity “m” value, approximately, equal to 0.5 at the temperature of 0.5 times the melting point and at a strain rate of 10 − 3 to 10 − 4 s − 1 . Ultrafine grains (100 nm to less than 1 μ m) exhibit superplasticity at high strain rate as well as at low temperature when compared to fine grain materials. It is attributed to the fact that both temperature and strain rates are inversely proportional to the grain size in Arrhenius-type superplastic constitute equation. The superplastic phenomenon with nano-sized grains (10 nm to less than 100 nm) is quite different from their higher-scale counterparts. It exhibits high ductility with high strength. Materials with mixed grain size distribution (bimodal or layered) are found to exhibit superior superplasticity when compared to the homogeneous grain-sized material. The deformation mechanisms governing these superplastic deformations with different scale grain size microstructures are discussed in this chapter.