Download or read book Microstructural Heterogeneity and the Mechanical Behavior of Nanocrystalline Metals written by Jagannathan Rajagopalan and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ultrafine grained and nanocrystalline metals have attracted increasing interest, both scientific and commercial, in recent years because of their potentially superior mechanical properties. Their properties, such as very high strength, primarily arise from the change in the underlying deformation mechanisms. Experimental and simulation studies have shown that because of the extremely small grain size conventional dislocation plasticity is curtailed in these materials and grain boundary mediated mechanisms become more important. Although the deformation behavior and the underlying mechanisms in these materials have been investigated in depth, relatively little attention has been focused on the inhomogeneous nature of their microstructure and its influence on their macroscopic response.