Dislocation boundaries and active slip systems

Part of the dislocations which have participated in the plastic deformation of a polycrystalline metal are stored in dislocation boundaries in a two- or three-dimensional arrangement. The dislocations in such boundaries can be analysed by determining the misorientation between neighbouring crystallites and the boundary orientation. Information about the dislocations in the boundaries can also be obtained by an analysis of active slip systems based on the crystallite orientation and the imposed stress or strain state in combination with appropriate constraint conditions. In the present paper an analysis of the boundary dislocation structure and of the slip systems has been conducted for pure aluminium cold-rolled to a von Mises strain of 0.41. The results show that a substantial majority of dislocations in different types of dislocation boundaries are from the primary and conjugate slip system in the adjoining crystallites. A basis is therefore provided for integrating deformation structure observations with plastic deformation behaviour.