Ultrafine-grained (UFG) nanostructured materials having grain sizes of tens and hundreds of nanometers recently have aroused interest among researchers in the materials science field. With respect to their mechanical properties, one would hope to be able to obtain the extremely strong states that can be expected in the case of strong grain refinement according to the Hall-Petch relationship (Gl...

We report that defect-free Au nanowires show superplasticity on tensile deformation. Evidences from high-resolution electron microscopes indicated that the plastic deformation proceeds layer-by-layer in an atomically coherent fashion to a long distance. Furthermore, the stress-strain curve provides full interpretation of the deformation. After initial superelastic deformation, the nanowire show...

We examine the e€ect of 10 vol.% TiB whisker reinforcement on transformation superplasticity of Ti±6Al±4V, induced by thermal cycling about the a/b phase transformation range of the matrix under a uniaxial tensile stress. During superplastic deformation, the whiskers gradually align along the external loading axis, as measured by electron back-scattering diffraction of deformed specimens. The c...

This study reports on experiments where bismuth sesquioxide (Bi2O3) was cycled between its high-temperature d-phase and one or more of its low-temperature phases (a-, b-, or g-Bi2O3) while being subjected to uniaxial tensile stresses in the range of 0.11–0.55 MPa. Reproducible strain increments of 0.4%–3.9% have been measured after each thermal cycle, and total tensile fracture strains of 10%–2...

Zirconia is a widely used oxide ceramic in various high performance applications due to its attractive mechanical, electrical and thermal properties. In particular, the material 3 mol% yttria stabilized tetragonal zirconia (3YTZ) has been shown to undergo superplastic deformation [1]. One crucial step in the understanding of processes like superplasticity involves the knowledge of appropriate c...