Size Effects Associated with Microcompression Experiments on Single-Crystal Magnesium

摘要

Microcompression is becoming an increasingly popular technique to investigate the orientation dependence and size effects associated with single crystals under uniaxial compression. Literature shows that for certain materials, as the diameter of these micro-scale pillars decreases, yield stresses and strain hardening rates may increase; however, this phenomenon has not yet fully been investigated for hexagonal close packed (hcp) materials. In this study, microcompression experiments are conducted on micropillars that are fabricated using focused ion beam (FIB) milling. These single crystal magnesium specimens are loaded in compression along the [0001] c-axis, and the stress-strain curves reveal that there are no significant size effects.