Effect of residual stress in gradient-grained metals: Dislocation dynamics simulations

A three-dimensional discrete dislocation dynamics (DDD) method was used to investigate the effect of residual stress on the stress-strain response of gradient nano-grained (GNG) metals. The GNG polycrystalline model was constructed, and different residual stress distributions were introduced in the DDD framework. The simulation shows that the distribution of residual stress has a significant influence on the tensile stress-strain curve. For a GNG sample containing both compressive and tensile residual stresses, the flow stress is firstly lower but ulti-mately higher than that of the sample without residual stress, which is caused by the combined effects of residual stress and gradient-grained structure. The evolution of dislocation microstructures indicates that the initial tensile residual stress in the sub-surface of the sample can promote the dislocation activation and thus lead to the decrease of overall yield stress. Whereas the compressive residual stress in the topmost surface of the sample can suppress the dislocation activation and multiplication in other regions, resulting in finally higher flow stress in comparison to that of the sample without residual stress. In addition, it is demonstrated that the reduction in the elastic modulus for GNG samples with residual stress observed in some experiments is due to the earlier plastic deformation that occurred in the region with initial tensile residual stress. The present study provides insights into the individual and combined effects of residual stress and gradient-grained structure in GNG metals.