Self-affine surface morphology of plastically deformed metals
Abstract
We analyze the surface morphology of metals after plastic deformation over a range of scales from 10 nm to 2 mm, using a combination of atomic force microscopy and scanning white-light interferometry. We demonstrate that an initially smooth surface during deformation develops self-affine roughness over almost four orders of magnitude in scale. The Hurst exponent of one-dimensional surface profiles is initially found to decrease with increasing strain and then stabilizes at . By analyzing their statistical properties we show that the one-dimensional surface profiles can be mathematically modelled as graphs of a fractional Brownian motion. Our findings can be understood in terms of a fractal distribution of plastic strain within the deformed samples.
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Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0405069,
title = {Self-affine surface morphology of plastically deformed metals},
author = {Michael Zaiser and Frederic Maqdani and Vasileios Koutsos and Elias Aifantis},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0405069},
year = {2009}
}