Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2011
A phenomenological model is used to explain the yield strength anomaly in FeAl. The model incorporates hardening by thermal vacancies at intermediate temperatures, and dislocation creep at elevated temperatures. Since the vacancy concentration increases exponentially with increasing temperature, the model predicts an exponential increase in strength with increasing temperature. This increasing strength is terminated by the onset of dislocation creep. The model captures the experimentally-observed strain rate dependency of the yield stress at high temperatures, and yields an activation enthalpy for vacancy formation which is in excellent agreement with a previously measured value [1].