Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 January 2011
Spherical scratch tests were conducted in individual grains of a randomly oriented polycrystalline body-centered-cubic (bcc) Ti–Nb alloy. For each grain, scratch tests were conducted at four different levels of normal load, which resulted in varying amounts of plastic strain during indentation. The results show a dependence of the horizontal load component on the crystallographic orientation and on the amount of plastic strain. The component of the horizontal force that resulted from plastic deformation was found to correlate with the active slip systems for the particular grain orientation.