Investigation of PLC band nucleation in AA5754

The purpose of the present work is the experimental investigation of the nucleation of PLC deformation bands in the aluminium alloy AA5754. The PLC bands are investigated using both mechanical methods and infrared (IR) thermography. The latter employs a high-speed IR camera which captures local changes of radiated power resulting from mechanical dissipation and heating due to the nucleation of PLC bands. The resulting IR images are used to determine spatio-temporal power field variations via image subtraction. Furthermore, band trajectories obtained from the IR images are used to study possible correlations between the spatio-temporal evolution of stress and radiated power in the specimens and PLC band development.