Disclinations in plastically deformed metallic materials

Cold-working of metallic materials tip to large strains is usually characte rised by simultaneous substructure evolution on different length scales and accompanied by the formation of significant lattice rotations. A promising tool for the description of such microstructure development is the concept of partial disclinations. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) studies i llustrate clearly, that defects of this kind are frequently existent in col d-worked metals and have to be accepted as an important defect entity in th e substructure evolution at larger strains. Moreover, it is shown that subs tructure modelling on the base of a coupled dislocation-disclination dynami cs leads to satisfying correspondence of calculated substructure characteri stics with experimental results obtained by TEM, X-ray diffractometry, and EBSD (electron backscattering diffraction), and to a satisfying prediction of the macroscopic deformation behaviour, i.e., especially the transition f rom stage III to stage I-V of crystal plasticity.