Heterogeneous plastic deformation and Bauschinger effect in ultrafine-grained metals: atomistic simulations

The effect of the dislocation density on yield strength and subsequent plastic deformation of ultrafine-grained metals was investigated in large-scale atomistic simulations. Polycrystalline models were constructed and uniaxial tension and compression were applied to elucidate the heterogeneous plastic deformation and the Bauschinger effect. The initial yield becomes heterogeneous as the dislocation density decreases owing to a wide range of Schmid factors of activated slip systems in each grain. A different mechanism of the Bauschinger effect was proposed, where the Bauschinger effect of ultrafine-grained metals is caused by the change in dislocation density in the process of forward and backward loadings.