Stress relaxation in 'aged high-purity aluminium at room temperature

Stress relaxation in 99.996% Al polycrystals of average grain diameter 0.30, 0.42 and 0.51 mm, annealed at 500 deg. C and 'aged' for six months at room temperature, have been studied as a function of initial stress level from which relaxation at constant strain was allowed to start. The results obtained were compared with those for 'un-aged' Al specimens of the same purity and grain size. The intrinsic height of the thermally activable energy barrier (1.6 eV) evaluated for 'aged' Al is comparable with that (1.9 eV) for 'un-aged' Al, and is of the order of magnitude for recovery processes. In 'aged' specimens, the relaxation rate at a given stress level is larger and associated activation volume is smaller than that in 'un-aged' specimens. This is probably due to the diffusion of vacancies and/or residual impurity atoms to the cores to edge dislocations in 'aged' specimens; the length of dislocation segment involved in unit activation process therefore gets shortened compared with that in 'un-aged' specimens. (author)