Experimental study of heterogeneities in strain and temperature fields at the microstructural level of polycrystalline metals through fully-coupled full-field measurements by Digital Image Correlation and Infrared Thermography

In this paper, we investigate and quantify the thermal effects induced by plastic deformation at the level of the microstructure of a polycrystalline metallic sample. For the first time, this investigation is conducted on a specimen containing hundred of grains. We use a unique experimental setup to access—simultaneously in-situ and in real time—strain and temperature fields of an austenitic stainless steel under tensile loading. We show that strain fields are directly linked to the expression of plasticity at the grain scale. We show, on the other hand, that thermal fields at the last increment of deformation are linked to the microstructural expression of plasticity on a larger lengthscale corresponding, instead, to grain clusters. Hence strain fields exhibit stronger localization features than the temperature fields in terms of both values and space. For a mean temperature rise of 0.75 °C and a global deformation of 2.4% in the fastest quasi-static regime investigated in this paper, the maximum local temperature rise is measured to be 0.88 °C even though local strain in grains can reach up to 6.7%. These fully-coupled measurements also provide the first experimental evidence that an instantaneous coupling takes place within grains between strain gradients and thermal dissipation. Finally, an estimation of a grain-scale field of the fraction of plastic work converted into heat is conducted and shown to be not only heterogeneous but also to be related to the microstructural features of deformation at the surface of the material, namely to the absence or presence of slip bands. The results obtained support the relevance of establishing energy balances and acquiring stored energy data at the microstructural scale where damage localization takes place.

► Thermomechanical fields measured in real time over a microstructure containing hundreds of grains. ► Direct comparison between the highly heterogeneous measured strain and temperature fields. ► Experimental evidence of an instantaneous coupling between strain gradients and thermal dissipation at the grain level. ► Estimation of a field of fraction of plastic work dissipated as heat at the microstructural scale. ► Results support that microscale energy balances could bring more insight into polycrystals damage mechanisms.