Part II – February 1969 - Papers - The Crystallography of Large-Grain Pairs in Tungsten Lamp Wire

Fort?-six- two-grain bounduries were studied in doped tungsten 1amp wire that had been heated to 3450°K very vapidly. Back-reflection Laue photograms were taken of the grain boundary partners and solved, using a computer. The resulting distribution of large-grain orientations was analyzed. Rotational axes were calculatedfor each grain boundary pair. The axes of least rotation show an anisotropy of rolalional angle. WhILE the orientations of large grains in straight doped tungsten wire have been studied extensively, little has been done to characterize the boundary that separates them. Rosi.1 upon seeing the jagged interlocking boundary in doped tungsten wire. inferred that the grains should have a preferred orientation, and proved it. He interprets his data as indicative of a single ideal orientation—(531)— being parallel to the wire axis. Rieck2, 3 and Mannerkoski' have essentially confirmed this finding. Opinsky, Orehotsky, and Siegle argue that the data suggest that (211)—a plane-is parallel to the wire axis instead. This (211 ) contains the (531). and hence would appear to be a more general case.5 Ahlborn and wasserman6 report that their orientation data stretch from (110) through (531) to (311). This path is the locus of {211 Recently. Opinsky has suggested that the data can be interpreted as a series of ideal orientations that can be related by coincidence relationships to the (110) fiber texture. All these investigators have determined the orientations of the large grains by the back-reflection Laue technique, and they have all obtained similar results. Only Rieck5 as methodically looked at the large grains along a wire. He was apparently not concerned with the relationships of the large grains across their common boundary, but only with their individual orientations. This research was undertaken to fill this gap in the under standing of the mechanical properties of tungsten wire. Only the crystallographic aspects of the problem will be reported here. In addition, the large number of large-grain orientations, which was accumulated in this study. will also be analyzed. EXPERIMENTAL MATERIAL AND TECHNIQUES All of the data were obtained from four pieces of the same 7-mil-diam General Electric tungsten lamp wire. Twelve-inch lengths of the cleaned wire were heated in vacuum by the flick of a switch to 90 pct of the amperes necessary for fusion (a temperature of approximately 3450°K) and held for 1 min. On the basis of other data. it is estimated that the rise time is of the order of 0.5 sec. The four pieces of wire could have come from anywhere within about 18 ft of wire. Consecutive segments of each piece of wire were mounted in bakelite and polished metallographically The polishing procedure followed that described by woods. "nly boundaries between two grains that each occupied the entire cross section of the wire were photographed and X-rayed. The metallographic sample was mounted accurately with respect to the X-ray unit. Steps were taken to read the films as accurately as possible with the conventional Greninger net. The data were then entered into computer programs that solve the Laue film by precisely the same techniques that are used in the solution of the film by means of the stereographic projection. The use of the computer has probably shifted the main source of error from the stereographic plot to the reading of the film. On the basis of several experiments, it is thought that the error associated with the entire process, from mounting the sample through the computer solution, is of the order of about one-half degree. The output of the computer is the direction cosines of the fiducial direction (the wire axis) and the locations of the three cube axes. The former data were used to calculate the differences in orientation between the two grain boundary partners, and the latter were used in the calculation of the rotational axes that could bring the two grains