Final Report Summary - SPDMETALS (Using Severe Plastic Deformation for the Processing of Bulk Nanostructured Metals) The processing of bulk metals through the application of severe plastic deformation (SPD) provides an opportunity for achieving remarkable grain refinement which cannot be attained using any other procedures. Typically, metals processed by SPD have average grain sizes in the submicrometer or even the nanometer range. These grain sizes are advantageous for use in many industrial applications. For example, the strength of a material at ambient temperature generally increases with decreasing grain size and therefore the SPD materials are usually very strong. At high temperatures, these ultrafine-grained materials exhibit very high or superplastic tensile elongations which means they can be used in superplastic forming operations. Because of these attractive qualities, SPD processing has developed over the last twenty years so that it is now one of the major research areas in modern Materials Science. This ERC programme was established to conduct cutting-edge research in the area of SPD processing with an emphasis on improving and optimizing the mechanical and functional properties of these materials after SPD. Experiments were conducted on a number of pure metals and metallic alloys and important results were obtained in several areas including developing an understanding of the evolution of strength and homogeneity under various processing conditions and the potential for using this approach in the fabrication of materials for use as implants in biomedical applications. In addition, a new processing technique was developed through the stacking of disks of different metals in high-pressure torsion in order to expeditiously produce nanocomposite materials of exceptionally high strength.
