Materials issues in some advanced forming techniques, including superplasticity

From mechanics and macroscopic viewpoints, the sensitivity of the flow stress of a material to the strain rate, i.e. the strain rate sensitivity (m), governs the development of neck formation and therefore has a strong influence on the tensile ductility and hence formability of materials. Values of strain rate sensitivity range from unity, for the case of Newtonian viscous materials, to less than 0.1 for some dispersion strengthened alloys. Intermediate values of m = 0.5 are associated with classical superplastic materials which contain very fine grain sizes following specialized processing. An overview is given of the influence of strain rate sensitivity on tensile ductility and of the various materials groups that can exhibit high values of strain rate sensitivity. Recent examples of enhanced formability (or extended tensile ductility) in specific regimes between m = 1 and m = 0.3 are described, and potential areas for commercial exploitation are noted. These examples include: internal stress superplasticity, superplastic ceramics, superplastic intermetallics, superplastic laminated composites, superplastic behavior over six orders of magnitude of strain rate in a range of aluminum-based alloys and composites, and enhanced ductility in Al-Mg alloys that require no special processing for microstructural development.