c © Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2010 Energetic model of metal hardening

Abstract. Based on Bailey hypothesis on the link between strain hardening and elastic lattice defect energy this paper suggests a shear strength energetic model that takes into consideration plastic strain intensity and rate as well as softening related to temperature annealing and dislocation annihilation. Metal strain hardening was demonstrated to be determined only by elastic strain energy related to the energy of accumulated defects. It is anticipated that accumulation of the elastic energy of defects is governed by plastic work. The suggested model has a reasonable agreement with the available experimental data for copper up to P = 70 GPa, for aluminum up to P = 10 GPa and for tantalum up to P = 20 GPa.