Project Leader: Daniel Kiener

Small scale and in-situ testing techniques, like nanoindentation, are becoming extremely important in order to observe and reliably characterize the mechanical behavior of materials on a local scale. For nanostructured materials, this deformation behavior is mainly dominated by dislocation interaction processes at the multitude of grain boundaries.

In this project, the deformation behavior of different ultrafine-grained materials is studied by using static and dynamic nanoindentation experiments. The results will be compared to in-situ TEM nanoindentation experiments in order to unveil the dislocation motions in these highly deformed materials. Thereby, a direct observation of dislocation-grain boundary interactions can be achieved. Finally, the results will be discussed in comparison with coarse grained and single crystalline materials.

Acknowledgement


This work is supported by the Zukunftsfonds Steiermark (PN 6019: Nanofatigue - Ermüdungseigenschaften nanostrukturierter Werkstoffe) and is performed in collaboration with the HTL Leoben.