A New Interpretation of Stress Relaxations in Ni 3 (Al,Hf) Single Crystals.

A technique of repeated stress relaxations is used to characterise the strain hardening rate (K) and the mobile dislocation density (ρm) in the flow strength anomaly domain of Ni 3 (Al,Hf) single crystals. It is shown that there is no independent means for measuring both effects but that reasonable assumptions about the strain hardening rate lead to determine the variation of ρm during relaxation. Preliminary results indicate that during relaxation ρm decreases more rapidly with strain (stress) when the temperature is raised.