The Initiation and Propagation of Dynamic Abnormal Grain Growth in Molybdenum

Plastic straining can initiate and propagate abnormal grains at temperatures significantly lower than is possible by static annealing. This phenomenon is termed dynamic abnormal grain growth (DAGG). Experiments that produce DAGG in commercial-purity molybdenum sheet materials are used to study the initiation and propagation of abnormal grains by plastic straining at temperatures from 1673 K to 2073 K (1400 degrees C to 1800 degrees C). The minimum strain necessary to initiate DAGG, termed the critical strain, decreases approximately linearly with increasing temperature. The variation in critical strain values observed at a single temperature and strain rate is well described by a normal distribution. An increased fraction of grains aligned with the < 110 > along the tensile axis, a preferred orientation for DAGG grains, appears to decrease the critical strain for DAGG initiation. DAGG grains preferentially grow into the finest-grained polycrystalline regions, which suggests that the driving force for DAGG propagation is primarily from grain-boundary curvature. No effects of local crystallographic texture variation on growth are evident in microstructures containing DAGG grains. Together, these observations support the hypothesis that plastic straining during DAGG acts primarily to increase boundary mobility, rather than to increase the driving force for boundary migration. (C) The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society and ASM International 2015