Development of microstructure in FCC metals during cold work

The evolution in microstructure and local crystallography is described, with emphasis on the behaviour of medium to high stacking fault energy FCC metals deformed at low temperature. This evolution is analysed within a common framework of grain subdivision on different size-scales. The largest scale is the macroscopic subdivision of crystals or grains, which will be presented using the behaviour of single crystals as an example. Subdivision on smaller scales is demonstrated for polycrystals, with emphasis on the effects of strain and grain orientation on the evolution in microstructure and local crystallography. This leads to an introduction of structural parameters and their analysis using a scaling hypothesis. A key finding is the correlation between structure and crystallographic orientation, which allows a slip pattern description by standard crystal plasticity models, leading to an analysis of the relationship between slip pattern and microstructure. These findings are briefly related to the macroscopic properties of deformed metals.