Measurement of plastic strain of polycrystalline material by electron backscatter diffraction

It is important to know the degree of plastic strain in order to evaluate the susceptibility and crack growth rate of stress corrosion cracking (SCC) in stainless steel and nickel based alloy, because SCC is enhanced by the cold work and causes many problems in nuclear power plant components. In this study, electron backscatter diffraction in conjunction with scanning electron microscopy is applied to measure the plastic strain imposed to stainless steel by tensile load. A new parameter, which quantifies the spread of the crystal orientation within individual grains arising due to dislocation accumulation during plastic deformation, is correlated with imposed plastic strain. The new parameter is called 'crystal deformation' and is determined from the spread in misorientation from the central grain orientation. It is confirmed that this parameter has a good correlation with plastic strain and is not affected by the data density of the crystal orientation map. The dislocation density distribution is also evaluated from the misorientation from the central orientation. Relatively high dislocation density was observed near grain boundaries and grain boundary triple points, which was consistent with the observed deterioration of EBSD pattern quality in those locations. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.