Explanation: Recovery of the yield point thus begins very rapidly. The yield point can be completely recovered in a zinc crystal at room temperature in a period of a day. The stress-strain diagrams indicate a well-known fact: the rate at which a property recovers isothermally is a decreasing function of the time.

Explanation: Another recovery process is called polygonization. In its simplest form it is associated with crystals that have been plastically bent. Many workers have shown that the Laue spots of bent crystals assume a fine structure after a recovery anneal (anneal that does not recrystallize the specimen).

Explanation: When a bent crystal is annealed, the curved crystal breaks up into a number of closely related small perfect crystal segments. This process has been given the name polygonization.

Explanation: In addition to lowering the strain energy, the regrouping of edge dislocations into low-angle boundaries has a second important effect. This is the removal of general lattice curvature. As a result of polygonization, crystal segments lying between a pair of low-angle boundaries approach the state of strain-free crystals with flat uncurved planes.

Explanation: An edge dislocation is capable of moving either by slip on its slip plane or by a climb in a direction perpendicular to its slip plane. The driving force for these movements comes from the strain energy of the dislocations, which decreases as a result of polygonization.

Explanation: The strain field of dislocations grouped on slip planes produces an effect force that makes them move into sub-boundaries. This force exists at all temperatures, but at low temperatures edge dislocations cannot climb. Since dislocation climb depends on the movement of vacancies (an activated process), the rate of polygonization increases rapidly with temperature.

Explanation: As the polygon walls become more widely separated, the rate of coalescence becomes a decreasing function of time and temperature so that the polygonization process approaches a more or less stable state with widely spaced, approximately parallel (in a single crystal deformed by simple bending) sub-boundaries.

Explanation: In an isothermal anneal, the rate at which a recovery process occurs always decreases with time; that is, it starts rapidly and proceeds at a slower and slower rate as the driving force for the reaction is expended.

Explanation: In deformed polycrystalline metals, high-temperature recovery is considered to be essentially a matter of polygonization and annihilation of dislocations. At lower temperatures other processes such as occur in dynamic recovery are of greater importance, current theories picture the recovery process as primarily a matter of reducing the number of point defects to their equilibrium value.

Explanation: Recrystallization during an isothermal anneal begins very slowly, and builds up to a maximum reaction rate, after which it finishes slowly. Recovery processes start at the beginning of the annealing cycle and account for the initial energy release, while recrystallization starts later and accounts for the second (larger) energy release.