A Review of the Relationship Between

Microstructural Features and the Stress-Strain

Behavior of Metals
Eine Analyse der Beziehungen zwischen mikrostrukturellen Charakteristika und
dem Spannungs-Dehnungsverhalten von Metallen
J.J. Gracio1*, F. Barlat1,2, E. Rauch3, J.W. Yoon1,2,
R.C. Picu4

The simulations of process design for automotive, aerospace, ri-
gid packaging and other components strongly depend on the mate-
rial behavior. In the case of forming processes involving plastic de-
formation, accurate descriptions of the material behavior is possible
only with reference to microstructural models based on features
such as crystallographic texture, dislocations, precipitates, solutes,
etc. In the present paper, the stress-strain behavior of metals is dis-
cussed in view of its relationship with relevant microstrucutural fea-
tures.
Key words: Stress-strain Behavior, Microstructure, Crystallo-
graphic Texture, Loading Mode, Strain Path Change, Strain
Rate, Temperature
Simulationen zur Prozessoptimierung in der Automobilindustrie,
Luftfahrt, Verpackungsindustrie, etc. sind stark vom Materialver-
halten abhängig. Im Falle von Umformprozessen mit plastischer
Verformung ist eine genaue Beschreibung des Materialverhaltens
nur unter Berücksichtigung mikrostruktureller Modelle basierend
auf Charakteristika, wie der kristallographischen Textur, den Ver-
setzungen, den Ausfällungen, der gelöster Stoffe, etc., möglich. Im
vorliegenden Artikel wird das Spannungs-Dehnungs-Verhalten von
Metallen im Kontext relevanter mikrostruktureller Charakteristika
untersucht.
Schlüsselworte: Spannungs-Dehnungs-Verhalten, Mikrostruk-
tur, kristallographische Struktur, Lastfall, Dehnungspfadänderung,
Dehnungsgeschwindigkeit, Temperatur

1 General Overview
It is well-known that, at moderate temperature, the motion
of dislocations is the principal mechanism leading to plastic
deformation. The glide of dislocations gives rise to shear
strains on slip systems, contributing to material anisotropy
and to strain hardening, respectively, by means of crystallo-
graphic texture development and dislocation accumulation.
However, the effectiveness of the mentioned features is, in
turn, dependent on a large number of interlacing parameters
and deformation conditions as shown in Fig. 1.
where, b is the Burgers vector, l is the shear modulus and a
is the parameter accounting for dislocation interaction. r0 is
the friction stress, which depends on many of the microstruc-
tural features of the metal considered. The strain hardening
term of the stress-strain curve is mostly affected by the total
dislocation density qt and the Taylor factor M, which represent
dislocation accumulation and texture strengthening, respec-
tively. The total dislocation density qt is closely interrelated
to the grain size as shown below and, in particular, gives
rise to the well-known Hall-Petch law (the smaller the grain
size, the higher the flow stress). qt is composed of statistically
stored dislocations (qS) that are related to the single crystal

2 Monotonic Loading
From a microstructural point of view, it was shown that the
flow stress is related to the total dislocation density qt accord-
ing to the equation [1]:
pffiffiffiffi
r ¼ r0 þ Malb qt ð1Þ

1
Center for Mechanical Technology and Automation, Department
of Mechanical Engineering, University of Aveiro, 3810-193
Aveiro, Portugal.
2
Materials Science Division, Alcoa Technical Center, 100 Tech-
nical Drive, Alcoa Center, PA 15069-0001, USA.
3
Génie Physique et Mécanique des Matériaux, ENSPG-INPG
(ESA CNRS 5010), BP 46, 38402 Saint Martin d’Hères Cedex, Fig. 1. Schematic representation of the principal parameters con-
France. trolling the mechanical behavior of metals
4 Abb. 1. Schematische Darstellung der Hauptparameter zur Be-
Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering,
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180, USA. schreibung des mechanischen Verhalten von Metallen

572 DOI: 10.1002/mawe.200500916 Mat.-wiss. u. Werkstofftech. 2005, 36, No. 10

F 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
behavior and of geometrically necessary dislocations (qg),
which account for grain boundary accommodation. According
to previous works [2, 3] the evolution of both types of dislo-
cation densities can be expressed as a function of the grain
size:

dqS 1 De þ k e 1
¼ ¼ ¼ þ ð2Þ
de bL kbD kb bD

dqg c
¼
de bD
In the above equations, L and D are the mean free path and
grain size, respectively, and c and k are material coefficients.
The physical meaning of this approach is that, at the beginning
of plastic deformation, both qS and qg are very small in the
entire volume of the grain (L ¼ D when e ¼ 0). As plastic
strain initiates, qS increases in the whole grain while qg is re-
stricted to grow in a zone near the grain boundary. The flow
stress can be described by a composite model [4] character-
ized by a volume fraction f near the grain boundary, which is
associated to qS þ qg, while the remaining core is associated to
qS

r ¼ ð1
f Þrcore þ f rboundary
n
¼ r0 þ Malb ð1
f ÞðqS Þ1=2 þ f ðqg þ qS Þ1=2 g ð3Þ

Combining the composite model with the different disloca-

tion evolutions, Eqs. (2) and (3), and the experimental stress-
strain curves measured for different grain sizes (Fig. 2.a), it is
possible to calculate the volume fraction f (Fig. 2.b). Accord-
ing to this approach, for a coarse grain, f decreases very ra-
pidly with increasing plastic deformation. In contrast, for a
small grain, a larger fraction of its volume participates to
the grain boundary accommodation mechanisms.
For materials exhibiting a strong plastic anisotropy due to
the crystallographic texture, the Hall-Petch relationship can-
not be simply analyzed on the basis of the macroscopic stress-
strain curves [5] (Fig. 3a). For this purpose, it is necessary to
consider the classical relationship:
r
sc

¼M ð4Þ
In this equation, where the bar designates the macroscopic
average quantities, M
depends only on the texture of the ma-
terial. sc, the critical resolved shear stress, contains all the in-
formation about the microstructure, i.e. the degree of harden-
ing which describes the resistance to glide on the slip systems.
Thus, the evolution of stress with strain contains the influ-
ences of both texture (via M
) and microstructure (via sc),
but through separate terms. The Hall-Petch relationship
must be verified at the level of the microstructure only since
M
is just a geometrical factor, i.e., through the microstructural
stress-strain curves sc(C
) instead of the conventional r

ð
eÞ cur-


ves. Here, C is the work conjugate of sc, just as
e is the work
conjugate of r
. C
is obtained from the plastic work rate
equivalence
_ ¼r

w
_ _


e_ ¼ sc C
! C
¼ M


e_ ð5Þ
where
e_ is the imposed macroscopic strain rate. By integrat-
ing over the deformation history, this equation becomes
Fig. 2. a) True stress-strain curves in copper for four different grain
sizes; b) Evolution of the estimated volume fraction f in which in-
tergranular accommodation takes place (grain boundary region) as
a function of strain (from [2])
Abb. 2. a) Wahre Spannungs-Dehnungs Kurven von Kupfer für
vier unterschiedliche Korngrößen; b) Entwicklung des geschätzten
Volumenanteils f als Funktion der Dehnung (aus [2])
ð ð

¼ M
C

e_ dt ¼ M
d
e ð6Þ
It is possible to derive the microstructural stress-strain
curves sc(C
) from the experimental r
ð
eÞ with the help of
Eqs. (4), (6) and the evolution of M
with strain as illustrated
in Fig. 3.b. It can be observed that, in this case, the Hall-Petch
relationship is observed, demonstrating that the hardening
evolution is more or less independent of texture evolution.
More recently [6, 7], investigations showed that the mechan-
ical behaviour of AA1050-O sheet sample is well-described
(Fig. 4) by a visco-plastic self-consistent approach (VPSC)
of crystal plasticity [8]. Moreover, the authors concluded
that for strongly textured alloys such as AA1050-O, strain
hardening is significantly affected by the orientation of the
tensile axis in the sheet plane. Namely, for an angle of 45
between the tensile and the rolling directions, the number
of active slip planes as predicted with the VPSC model
was much lower than for 0 and 90 . This can be interpreted
as two materials with the same grain size and different texture,
which exhibit two different strain hardening curves.

Mat.-wiss. u. Werkstofftech. 2005, 36, No. 10 A Review of the Relationship Between Microstructural Features 573
Fig. 3. a) True stress-strain curves in AA1050 for three different
annealing conditions but only two grain sizes; b) Corresponding
stress-strain curves at the slip system level correcting for the Taylor
factor evolution (from [5])
Abb. 3. a) Wahre Spannungs-Dehnungs Kurven von Kupfer für
drei unterschiedliche Härtezustände, jedoch nur zwei Korngrößen;
b) Entsprechende Spannungs-Dehnungs-Kurve für die Taylorfakto-
renentwicklung (aus [5])
3 Effect of Strain Path Change
The effects that strain path changes produce on the disloca-
tion substructure and the stress-strain curve depend on the
amplitude of the change applied. To characterize this ampli-
tude, the parameter a was proposed [9]:
dep  de
a¼ ð7Þ
kdep kkdek
where de and dep represent, in vector form, the plastic strain
increment tensors just prior and after the strain path change. a
¼ 1 and a ¼
1 correspond to monotonic and reverse defor-
mations, respectively. The Bauschinger effect, for instance,
can be observed for a strain path change characterized by a
¼
1.
Based on this approach, two critical situations have been
identified. The first one is characterized by a ¼ 0, which cor-
responds to latent hardening: all the slip systems active during
the first loading become latent after the strain path change.
Typical strain path changes in steel for different values of
a are shown in Fig. 5 [10]. Moreover, it was demonstrated
that the activation of new slip systems is related, essentially,
with the activation of new Burgers vectors rather than with the
activation of new slip planes [11].
574 J.J. Gracio, F. Barlat, E. Rauch, J.W. Yoon and R.C. Picu
Fig. 4. a) True stress-true strain curves in uniaxial tension and sim-
ple shear for aluminium alloy 1050-O; b) Corresponding curves
predicted with VPSC model for AA1050-O (from [6])
Abb. 4. a) Wahre Spannungs-Dehnungs Kurven für einachsigen
Zug und einfache Schubbeanspruchung der Aluminium Legierung
1050-O; b) Entsprechende Kurve prognostiziert mit dem VPSC
Model für AA 1050-O (aus [6])
Consequently, after the strain path change, a higher stress is
required to activate and move the new dislocations. The phys-
ical model proposed to describe the above phenomenon is cap-
tured by the following relationship
rbe 
s
¼1þ ð8Þ
rr
s
In this equation rbe is the yield stress after the change in
strain path (back extrapolated reloading stress), rr the flow
stress just before unloading and ~s þ ~s represents the effec-
tive reloading shear stress including the hardening of forest
dislocations generated during the prestrain.
The other critical situation is observed for a ¼
1. In this
case, many metals and alloys exhibit a transient stagnation of
strain hardening after the strain path change (Fig. 6). For a
long time, many investigators considered that this phenome-
non resulted from the dissolution of the dislocation micro-
structure created during the first deformation step. Such ap-
proach was based on; (a) the calculations showing that all
slip systems activated during the first deformation become ac-
tive after the change in strain path but in the reverse direction
Mat.-wiss. u. Werkstofftech. 2005, 36, No. 10

Fig. 5. Stress-strain curves obtained with different strain path
changes for steel (a close to 1 for U ¼ 15 , a close to 0 for U
¼ 45 and U ¼ 90 )
Abb. 5. Spannungs-Dehnungs-Kurve für unterschiedliche Deh-
nungspfadänderungen für Stahl (a nahe 1 für U ¼ 15 , a nahe 0
für U ¼ 45 und U ¼ 90 )
and; (b) the evidence that cell dissolution gives rise to dislo-
cation segments aligned with the trace of the planes corre-
sponding to the systems activated in the reverse direction.
However, recent works [12] clearly demonstrated that cell dis-
integration is not responsible but merely correlated to the tran-
sient stagnation of the strain hardening rate. The authors con-
cluded that the physical process responsible for the transient
stagnation of strain hardening is related to the nature of dis-
locations generated during the prestrain, i.e., the sign and the
direction of their Burgers vector and their ease to annihilate
during reloading.
Mat.-wiss. u. Werkstofftech. 2005, 36, No. 10 A Review of the Relationship Between Microstructural Features
Fig. 6. Experimental stress-plastic work curve in simple shear for
AA1050-O after loading in the reverse direction (from [7])
Abb. 6. Experimentelle Spannungs-Dehnungs-Kurve unter einfa-
cher Schubbeanspruchung für AA1050-O nach Beanspruchung
in die entgegengesetzte Richtung (aus [7])
4 Effect of Loading Mode
The loading mode appears to be, in certain conditions, one
of the important parameters controlling the mechanical behav-
ior of metals. In uniaxial tension, only a normal stress com-
ponent is imposed while the other components of the stress
tensor are equal to zero. In this case, the material is not con-
strained and its response follows the model described by Eq.
(3) with less slip activity in the grain core than in the volume
near the boundary. In contrast, for strain imposed conditions
(for instance rolling), the number of active slip systems re-
quired to accommodate the macroscopically imposed plastic
deformation increases substantially in the grain core while the
intergranular accommodation does not change significantly.
Under such conditions, the core and boundary regions of
the grains do behave in a similar manner and the effect of grain
size on the mechanical behavior is drastically attenuated.
The deformation mode can also be determinant for the oc-
currence of plastic flow localization. In fact, it was demon-
strated that during a strain path change, which involves a la-
tent hardening phenomenon, microbands can develop in the
grains if a predominant planar slip occurs after the change
of strain path. If the loading mode is such that the grain rotates
after reloading, the microband nucleation tends to vanish and
the microbands contribute to strain hardening as the normal
dislocation cells. However, if the imposed loading mode is
such that the direction of the critical shear stress is aligned
with the direction of the slip system, i.e., the grain orientation
is stable, a significant amount of localized shearing occurs
through the microbands (Fig. 7). It can be shown [13] that
the average overall shear strain due to the microbands depends
on the average shear strain and thickness associated with one
microband, as well as on the distance between microbands.
Plastic instability occurs only when most of the total shear
is associated to the microbands.
575
Fig. 7. Shear offsets produced by microbands developed in simple shear at intersections with previous tension structure: a) c=0.11; b)
c=0.26 (from [13])
Abb. 7. Durch Mikrobänder bedingte Schubversetzungen entwickelt unter Schubbeanspruchung an Kreuzungspunkten mit der vorherigen
Dehnungsstruktur
5 Effect of Strain Rate and Temperature
The flow stress of a material depends on the testing tem-
perature and the strain rate. In fact, it has been observed
that strain rate and temperature have similar effect on plasti-
city. Raising the temperature under which an experiment is
carried out has a similar effect as decreasing the strain rate.
Therefore, in processes involving hot deformation such as
rolling, forging or extrusion, these two variables are usually
combined in a single quantity, the so-called Zener-Hollomon
parameter Z
Z ¼ e_ expð
Q=RTÞ ð9Þ
thus reducing the number of variables in the constitutive
equations. In this relationship, R is the gas constant and Q
an activation energy, which is determined experimentally
for a given material. The temperature has another influence
on plasticity. When subjected to a constant stress smaller
than the yield limit, a material can deform by creep. However,
creep is not discussed further in this paper since it involves
other deformation mechanisms different from slip.
For a given temperature, it is often assumed that the flow
stress depends on the strain and strain rate according to the
equation:
 m
e_
R ¼ rðeÞ ð10Þ
e_ 0
R is the flow stress when the plastic strain rate is e_ , e_ 0 is a
reference plastic strain rate at which the strain hardening
curve r(e) is measured, and m is the strain rate sensitivity
(SRS) parameter. At described above, a higher strain rate
has the same result on the stress-strain curve as a lower tem-
perature, i.e., a larger flow stress (see expression for Z). How-
ever, the strain rate and deformation temperature act concur-
rently to display a different behavior for metals in which dy-
namic strain aging (DSA) occurs. It is currently believed that
this phenomenon corresponds to the diffusion of solute atoms
towards arrested mobile dislocations. The longer a dislocation
is arrested, the higher the amount of solute is available to
“age” the dislocation. This means that, at lower strain rate,
it is necessary to produce a higher stress to move the disloca-
576 J.J. Gracio, F. Barlat, E. Rauch, J.W. Yoon and R.C. Picu
tions, in contrast to the strain rate temperature effect assessed
with Z. This, however, occurs only when the dislocation mo-
bility and the solute diffusion rate are close to a critical ratio.
For instance, at low temperature, the diffusion rate is too low
for the occurrence of DSA. For the modeling of this pheno-
menon, Kubin and Estrin [14] proposed a model which leads
to the following expression for the SRS parameters:
@lnR 2f0
m¼ ¼ m0
X expð
XÞ ð11Þ
@ln_e 3r
where,
 2=3
bLqm
X¼ ð12Þ
e_ t0
In these equations, qm is the mobile dislocation density, f0 is
the maximum stress increase produced by DSA and L is the
dislocation mean free path. The relaxation time associated
with diffusion, t0, depends on the temperature, the bulk solute
volume fraction, the diffusion coefficient of the solute atoms
and the binding energy between solute and dislocations. As a
result, the strain rate sensitivity parameter m is not an increas-
ing function but depends on the temperature. An example is
presented in Fig. 8 for an alloy (AA5182-0), case in which the
strain rate sensitivity is negative between the temperature of
approximately -80  C and 100  C.
The above results were also interpreted by a model which
considers that the increase of the athermal component in the
DSA range is due to the increase of the strength of dislocation
junctions induced by solute clustering at forest dislocations
[15, 16].
Conclusions
Strain hardening and strain rate sensitivity as well are major
material phenomena that dictate how the material behaves in
forming processes and affect the success of a manufacturing
operation. This paper describes relevant microscopic features
that influence strain hardening in metal. It introduces also ge-
neric examples of models that, based on a deep physical un-
Mat.-wiss. u. Werkstofftech. 2005, 36, No. 10

Fig. 8. Variation of the steady-state strain rate sensitivity para-
meter m with temperature for AA5182-O (from [15])
Abb. 8. Veränderung des stationären Dehnungsraten-Sensibilitäts-
parameters m in Abhängigkeit von der Temperatur für AA5182-O
(aus [15])
derstanding, integrate these features for the prediction of the
stress-strain behavior of metals and alloy. These simple, one-
dimensional, models also provide insight and guidance as how
to introduce microstructural features into three-dimensional
constitutive models needed for accurate simulations of form-
ing processes.
Acknowledgements
The authors are indebted to the Portuguese Foundation of
Science and Technology (FCT) and Program POCTI/CTM/
42724/2001 for financial support.
Mat.-wiss. u. Werkstofftech. 2005, 36, No. 10 A Review of the Relationship Between Microstructural Features
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Corresponding author: J. J. Gracio, Center for Mechanical
Technology and Automation, Department of Mechanical
Engineering, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal,
Fax: 00351234370953, E-mail: jgracio@mec.ua.pt
Received in final form: August 8, 2005 [T 916]
577