Orientation Dependence of Ductility of Mg Single Crystals at Elevated Temperature

Abstract

Orientation-controlled Mg single crystals were tensile tested at temperatures between 473 K and 673 K at a strain rate of 4.2 x 10-4 s-1 in vacuum. Though all the single crystals showed high ductility compared with that of polycrystals, the ductility of the single crystals strongly depended on the crystal orientation. The [27 -1 -26 1] single crystal showed 0.57 fracture strain, while the [3 8 -11 -1] single crystal showed superplastic behavior of ductility over 1.8 strain. The observed strong orientation dependence of ductility seemed to be caused by orientation dependence of ease occurrence of dynamic recrystallization (DRX) in the single crystals during high-temperature deformation. The orientation dependence of ductility of Mg single crystals will be discussed in detail concerning crystallographical orientations of the single crystals, occurrence of DRX and fracture.