The stresses and work hardening rates of mild steel with different dislocation patterns

The dependence of the plastic behaviour of mild steel on dislocation arrangements is measured with strain-reversal tests. The effect is deduced from the room temperature reloading curves of samples with and without a cell structure. The high temperature sensitivity of the lattice friction is used to control the substructure during prestrain. At reloading, the stress related to the homogeneous dislocation distribution is 10% lower than the one pertaining to the cell structure. It is argued that the discrepancy is due to a difference in dislocation densities rather than to the patterning.