Use of Digital Image Correlation (DIC) to Improve the Critical Strain-Annealing (CSA) Method for Producing Large Crystals: Application to A1050 Commercially Pure Aluminum

The aim of this work is to present an efficient procedure for growing large metallic single crystals that associates a classical growth technique (namely, the critical strain-annealing-CSA-method) with advanced methods of accurate full-field strain measurements based on digital image correlation (DIC) technique and of sample geometry design using finite element analysis. Measuring the critical plastic strains with an accuracy better than 0.1% resulted in a significantly improved construction of the recrystallization diagram. Applying this "DIC-assisted CSA method" to an A1050 commercially pure aluminum allowed obtaining in less than two days (26 h to 30 h) large multi-crystal samples with a half dozen of large grains. Their length between 35 mm and 100 mm was in full agreement with the obtained recrystallization diagram.