Temperature and direction dependence of internal strain and texture evolution during deformation of uranium

Depleted uranium is of current programmatic interest at Los Alamos National Lab due to its high density and nuclear applications. At room temperature, depleted uranium displays an orthorhombic crystal structure with highly anisotropic mechanical and thermal properties. For instance, the coefficient of thermal expansion is roughly 20 × 10−6 °C−1 in the a and c directions, but near zero or slightly negative in the b direction. The innate anisotropy combined with thermo-mechanical processing during manufacture results in spatially varying residual stresses and crystallographic texture, which can cause distortion, and failure in completed parts, effectively wasting resources. This paper focuses on the development of residual stresses and textures during deformation at room and elevated temperatures with an eye on the future development of computational polycrystalline plasticity models based on the known micro-mechanical deformation mechanisms of the material.