60 Years of Hall-Petch: Past to Present Nano-Scale Connections

Pioneering research results reported in the early 1950's by E. O. Hall and N. J. Petch on iron and steel materials have led to an expanded description of the grain size dependence of the complete stress strain behavior of a wider range of materials and including assessments of other mechanical properties such as the ductile to brittle transition behavior and the hardness of materials, particularly, of nanocrystalline materials. The dislocation pile-up model that was presented originally for the inverse square root of grain diameter dependence of material strength has endured. Most recently, the pile-up model description has been more definitely associated with the Griffith theory of achieving a critical stress concentration at the tip of a crack; and, the Hall-Petch analysis has been connected to the macro-scale description of the fracture mechanics stress intensity parameter. These topics and other 60 years of Hall-Petch type researches are tracked over time in the present report while giving special emphasis to current order-of-magnitude strength improvements that are reported for metals with nanopolycrystalline grain diameters.