Tensile Deformation of Critically Oriented Brass Crystals

DURING the course of preparation of crystals of alpha brass for an investigation of their creep characteristics, a number of critically oriented crystals were produced. In each of these specimens, P0, the specimen axis, lay near some important crystallographic direction or on or near the border of two possible slip systems. Because of the unusual nature of their orientations, it was considered of interest to deform these speci-mens in simple tension and to study orientation changes and any unusual occurrences, different from what would be expected for specimens in which only one slip system had distinctly the highest maximum resolved shear stress. Choice of actual operating slip system in a crystal offering an immedi-ate possibility of two slip systems would be expected to be due to chance, defect, or some inhomogeneity. Even in an ideally perfect crystal so oriented, the natural oscillations of the atoms about their lattice positions would give rise to a condition wherein one slip system would be favored over the other at the critical shear stress. In the large, nonperfect crystals of the present investigation, slip on both systems, but in different portions of the specimen, might occasionally be expected.