Understanding the mechanisms of electroplasticity from a crystal plasticity perspective

Electroplasticity is defined as the reduction in flow stress of a material undergoing deformation on passing an electrical pulse through it. The lowering of flow stress during electrical pulsing has been attributed to a combination of three mechanisms: softening due to Joule-heating of the material, de-pinning of dislocations from paramagnetic obstacles, and the electron-wind force acting on dislocations. However, there is no consensus in literature regarding the relative magnitudes of the reductions in flow stress resulting from each of these mechanisms. In this paper, we extend a dislocation density based crystal plasticity model to incorporate the mechanisms of electroplasticity and perform simulations where a single electrical pulse is applied during compressive deformation of a polycrystalline FCC material with random texture. We analyze the reductions in flow stress to understand the relative importance of the different mechanisms of electroplasticity and delineate their dependencies on the various parameters related to electrical pulsing and dislocation motion. Our study establishes that the reductions in flow stress are largely due to the mechanisms of de-pinning of dislocations from paramagnetic obstacles and Joule-heating, with their relative dominance determined by the specific choice of crystal plasticity parameters corresponding to the particular material of interest.