2. Slight to moderate deformations

2.1 Heat yield strength

Figure 5 shows variations in the macroscopic yield strength σ _e of an annealed metal with temperature and strain rate. Essentially, two temperature ranges can be distinguished. At low temperatures, σ _e decreases very slowly with increasing temperature and does not depend on the strain rate: this range is called the athermal plateau and corresponds to the cold deformation (T/T _f < 0.3) described elsewhere in this treatise [29] . At higher temperatures, the...