Grain boundary sliding in creep and superplasticity: the Gifkins decades and twenty-five years later

摘要

This paper is based on the Gifkins Lecture presented to the Victorian Branch of the Institute of Materials Engineering Australasia at Monash University on 22 May, 2003. The process of grain boundary sliding, in which the grains of a polycrystalline material move in response to an external stress, is now recognized as a significant deformation mechanism in high temperature creep and superplasticity Bob Gifkins played a pivotal role in developing an understanding of this flow process and especially in formulating the procedures that are used to evaluate the strain contributed by sliding under selected experimental conditions. This report examines Bob's pioneering work, conducted at the University of Melbourne over a period of three decades, and then considers the more recent developments that have taken place in the twenty-five years following his retirement..