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Item Defining the stages of annealing in a moderately deformed commercial Zirconium alloy(Elsevier, 2015-11) Kumar, GulshanFully recrystallized Zircaloy-4 was cold rolled to 20% reduction in thickness. The deformed microstructure had fragmented and non-fragmented grains. Fragmentation represented deformation-induced refinement in grain size. Typically, the fragmented grains had more misorientation and were finer than the as-received grains. The deformed samples were subjected to 650°C annealing for different time periods, followed by water quenching. Based on experimental observations, three distinct stages of annealing were noted. Stage I caused changes in the misorientations of the non-fragmented grains, while the fragmented regions remained unaffected. This was also the most effective stage for residual stress relief. In stage II, discontinuous recrystallization and grain coarsening consumed the fragmented regions. This stage provided the highest softening. Finally, stage III created recovery-induced grain refinement of the larger non-fragmented grains. A combination of indirect and direct observations thus provided a complete picture of the annealing related microstructural changes in a moderately deformed commercial Zirconium alloy.Item A miniature physical simulator for pilgering(Elsevier, 2016-11) Kumar, GulshanPilgering is a complex incremental manufacturing process for seamless tubes. In this work, a miniature physical simulator for pilgering was designed and fabricated. This miniature simulator employs a grooved roll-die and a mandrel and can impose controlled reductions in both tube diameter and wall thickness. Pilgering deformation over a range of ratios of reductions in wall thickness and in tube diameter, known as the -factor, was imposed on hemi-cylindrical zirconium alloy specimens. The influence of the -factor on the microstructure and deformation texture of the deformed specimens was quantified. A polycrystal plasticity calculation based on the binary tree model was used to simulate texture evolution during the simulated pilgering process. The computer model quantitatively captured the variation with of the Kearns factors, as measured in the physically simulated specimen. The small differences noticed between the predicted and experimental final textures point to unaccounted transverse components of the flow field. These observations suggest that physical and/or computer simulations can form the basis of a rapid methodology for tool selection to realize prescribed post-pilgering textures.Item Temperature dependence of work hardening in sparsely twinning zirconium(Elsevier, 2017-01) Kumar, GulshanFully recrystallized commercial Zirconium plates were subjected to uniaxial tension. Tests were conducted at different temperatures (123 K - 623 K) and along two plate directions. Both directions were nominally unfavorable for deformation twinning. The effect of the working temperature on crystallographic texture and in-grain misorientation development was insignificant. However, systematic variation in work hardening and in the area fraction and morphology of deformation twins was observed with temperature. At all temperatures, twinning was associated with significant near boundary mesoscopic shear, suggesting a possible linkage with twin nucleation. A binary tree based model of the polycrystal, which explicitly accounts for grain boundary accommodation and implements the phenomenological extended Voce hardening law, was implemented. This model could capture the measured stress-strain response and twin volume fractions accurately. Interestingly, slip and twin system hardness evolution permitted multiplicative decomposition into temperature-dependent, and accumulated strain-dependent parts. Furthermore, under conditions of relatively limited deformation twinning, the work hardening of the slip and twin systems followed two phenomenological laws proposed in the literature for non-twinning single-phase face centered cubic materials.Item Experimental characterization and finite element modeling of through thickness deformation gradient in a cold rolled zirconium sheet(Elsevier, 2017-11) Kumar, GulshanA commercial Zirconium alloy was subjected to different thickness reductions (20%, 40% and 60%) by cold rolling. A through-thickness gradient in microstructure, crystallographic texture and residual stress was observed. This gradient was till 1/8th of the specimen thickness, and implied a corresponding anisotropy in the imposed strain state. An elasto-plastic FE (finite element) model was developed to capture such through thickness deformation gradients. A reasonably good agreement was observed between the experimental and predicted residual stress distributions when the material anisotropy was accounted for. Through-thickness residual stress evolution was shown to be significantly affected by material anisotropy and to a lesser extent by the rolling parameters (coefficient of friction and rotational speed).