Part IX – September 1968 - Papers - The Plastic Deformation of Zirconium-Oxygen Alloy Single Crystals in the Range 77° to 950°K

The defortnaliotz of zirconicltt single crystals conlaining osygen in the range 740 to 6800 atom parts per nilllion was esanined oc7er the range 77" to 950°K. An anctlsis of the dqfarmaliotz parameters leads to the cotcllsiotr that the rale -cotzfrolling thermally activated dqivr,irrtion process oe-r /he range 77" to 560°K is oc.crco,ling osvgen alotns. A thermally actitaled defor,ilntion process is not found between 600" and 800", but does occur aboz%e 800°K. THE present investigation was undertaken to measure the effects of controlled amounts of oxygen on the deformation parameters of a zirconium single crystals over the temperature range 77" to 950°K and to determine the rate-controlling mechanisms. Although there is no doubt that the mechanical properties of the group IV metals, titanium, zirconium, and hafnium, are strongly influenced by the interstitial impurities oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen, there are many conflicting theories as to the role played by the interstitials during the deformation proess.'- There is general agreement that the mechanisms which control plastic flow in a metal impose characteristic values on such parameters as the flow stress and its temperature dependence, the activation volume, and the activation energies. These parameters will be used to analyze the deformation mechanisms. eltham,' Sargent,16 and ibbs' have shown that the stress relaxation technique allows the activation volume characteristic of the deformation process to be found during the course of a simple tension test. In many cases it is found that the relaxation of stress is logarithmic with time and obeys a relationship of the following form: T-T = AT =S logl0(qt + C) [I] where t, is the shear stress at the start of the relaxation test, t is the shear stress at time t, and S. q, and C are experimental constants, and S is the strain rate sensitivity of the stress t as shown in the appendix. The slope found from a semilogarithmic plot of At vs time is approximately equal to S. The activation volume u, association with the deformation process, is found from the following relationship: The theoretical treatment of thermally activated plastic flow due to schoeck18 shows that the activation volume when combined with the temperature dependence of the flow stress gives the activation energy for the process according to equations: seegerZ3 considers that the flow stress at lower temperatures ld is composed of two parts such that Tapplied = tinternal + Teffective , where Teffective 3 ff , is the stress necessary to overcome the local obstacles to deformation and Tinternal, ri, is the stress necessary to overcome the long-range elastic stress field of dislocations on other planes. ri is considered to be largely elastic in origin and can be estimated from the stress value at the temperature independent portion of the flow stress-temperature curve. EXPERIMENTAL The crystal bar zirconium used in this investigation was supplied by Wah Chang Corp. whose certified analysis gave the following impurity contents in parts per million by weight: oxygen, 150; nitrogen, 10; iron, 180. All others were less than 100 ppm. The oxygen and iron contents were confirmed by neutron activation and chemical analyses, respectively. Single crystals were grown in an electron beam furnace according to the method of Wilson and Pickle-simer'' and ills.'' The orientation of the crystals was such that the specimen axes were located in the lower third of the standard section of the basal plane stereographic projection for zirconium. This orienta-