On the impact of grain size distribution on the plastic behaviour of polycrystalline metals

Recent experimental studies have reported improved combinations of strength and uniform elongation in ultrafine-grained polycrystals with bi-modal grain size distributions. Despite these results, the extent to which the grain size distribution affects macroscopic tensile response, particularly at large strains, is unclear. This issue is examined here for polycrystals with varying grain sizes and grain size distributions using a grain size dependent constitutive model within the viscoplastic self-consistent formalism. The evolution of the macroscopic and grain-level stresses and strains has been monitored as a function of the width and mean of the grain size distribution. As an example of highly heterogeneous structures, the stress–strain response of a number of bi-modal microstructures have been examined and compared with their uni-modal counterparts.