Macroscopic and Microscopic Descriptions of the Plastic Deformation of Fcc Metals over a Wide Range of Strain and Temperature

The plastic behavior of face-centered cubic metals was investigated over a wide range of strain and testing temperature. The experimental stress-strain data were described using both macroscopic and microscopic, well-established relationships. The characteristics of these descriptions are discussed and compared with each other. The analysis of the characteristics leads to a definition of the low and high temperature deformation regions, where the kinetics of both the dislocation-multiplication and the dislocation-annihilation (recovery) are different. For pure aluminum, it is shown that the boundary between these two regions occurs at a homologous temperature of the order of $\approx 0.5 T_{m}$ where $T_{m}$ is the absolute melting temperature. From this analysis, correlations are also drawn between the macroscopic parameters describing the stress-strain relationship and the fundamental characteristics of the microscopic processes both at room temperature and elevated temperatures.