Effect of dislocation absorption by surfaces on strain hardening of single crystalline thin films.

In the paper, by taking advantage of a strain gradient crystal plasticity theory with consideration of dislocation absorption by surfaces, plastic behaviors of thin films with two active slip systems under constrained shear is analytically studied. It is found that the critical loads for the onset of dislocations absorption by surfaces for the two slip systems are size dependent and are greatly affected by the latent hardening in the grain interior, and dislocations absorption by surfaces can significantly change the distributions of the plastic deformation and dislocation density and hence the strain-hardening behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]