Evolution of acoustic softening effect on ultrasonic-assisted micro/meso-compression behavior and microstructure

The application of ultrasonic vibration is an effective method to overcome the processing problems in micro/meso-forming. Previously it was observed that ultrasonic vibration could reduce flowing stress in the forming process, called ultrasonic volume effect. The volume effect contains multi-mechanisms such as stress superposition leading to apparent average stress reduction, acoustic softening and ultrasonic impact leading to real stress reductin. However, the evolutional characteristics and the mechanism of acoustic softening on material deformation is still not clear. And in most previous studies only the average stress but not the oscillatory stress was measured due to the convenience of dynamic force sensing system, which confused the different ultrasonic volume effects, acoustic softening, stress superposition and ultrasonic impact. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of acoustic softening on micro/meso-compression behavior and microstructure evolution. An ultrasonic-assisted compression test system with dynamic force sensing technology was developed. And a series of ultrasonic-assisted micro/meso-compression tests at different amplitudes were carried out on pure copper C1100O combining the microstructure analysis by EBSD technique. By analyzing the waveform of the oscillatory stress in the process, acoustic softening was successfully separated from the stress superposition and it was found that the deformation strain plays an important role on the effect of acoustic softening. The stress reduction by acoustic softening increases with the flowing strain or ultrasonic amplitude increasing. Besides, there is an evolutionary transition of acoustic softening ratio between small strain and large strain. When acoustic softening occurs, the low-angle grain boundaries distribute randomly in grains, compared to the piled distribution without ultrasonic assistance, implying motions of the low-angle grain boundaries or dislocation is improved by acoustic softening, resulting in the real stress reduction. In addition, with small deformation strain, the elongated grain becomes equiaxed and dislocation density is significantly reduced, which may be the result of the increased dislocation annihilation due to ultrasonic-induced dynamic recovery. However, with the deformation strain increasing to some extent, acoustic hardening gradually becomes significant, leading to much less effectiveness of acoustic softening on dislocation density reduction. The findings of this study provide an instructive understanding of the underlying mechanisms of acoustic softening in ultrasonic-assisted micro/meso-forming.