The advent of nanocrystalline materials has provided new opportunities to explore grain size dependent phenomenon. Superplasticity is such a grain size dependent phenomenon defined by the ability to attain tensile elongation of 200% or more. Superplasticity in microcrystalline materials has been well characterized. The constitutive equations that describe microcrystalline superplasticity predict enhanced properties for nanocrystalline materials. Enhanced properties in such nanocrystalline material include lower superplastic temperature at constant strain rate, higher superplastic strain rate at constant temperature, and lower flow stresses. Investigations with nanocrystalline Ni3Al and ultra-fine grained Ti-6Al-4V alloy have shown a reduction in the superplastic temperature. However, the flow stresses in these materials are significantly higher than expected. The high flow stresses are accompanied by strong strain hardening.

Transmission electron microscopy in situ straining of nanocrystalline Ni3Al has shown that grain boundary sliding and grain rotation occurred during straining. The sliding and rotation decreased with strain. Dislocation activity was observed but was not extensive. There was no observable dislocation storage. The parameters of the generalized constitutive equation for superplasticity for nanocrystalline Ni3Al and Ti-6Al-4V are in reasonable agreement with the parameters for microcrystalline material. The rate parameters suggest that nanocrystalline superplasticity shares common features with microcrystalline superplasticity. In contrast, the observed flow stresses and strong strain hardening indicate that nanocrystalline superplasticity is not a simple extension of microcrystalline behavior scaled to finer grain size.