Chapter 11 – Work Hardening and Annealing

Work hardening arises from the interactions of dislocations with amongst themselves or with other defects such as second-phase particles. Taylor’s model describes work hardening due to mutual interactions of dislocations, while interactions with particles are important in dispersion-hardened alloys. Additional defects including anti-phase domain boundary tubes offer additional contributions to work hardening in ordered alloys. On the contrary, annealing leads to softening and takes place via the three steps of recovery, recrystallization and grain growth. The texture of the material can change significantly following recrystallization. In materials with low stacking fault energy, twins can also form during annealing.