Work hardening and plastic equation of state of tantalum

The influence of cold deformation on the thermal and athermal components of the flow stress of tantalum was investigated. Up to high deformation levels the strain hardening is due only to the development of internal stress fields; the effective stress remains almost constant. The athermal strain hardening of tantalum is parabolic at low deformation levels (epsilon < 0.5) and linear at high deformation levels, as for other bcc metals. Hart's plastic equation of state is shown to be valid for tantalum at room temperature in the whole deformation range investigated (from epsilon = 0.005 to epsilon = 2.8). (author)