Material design through multi-scale simulations: Aluminum sheet forming using an anisotropic yield function coupled with crystal plasticity theory

Crystal plasticity theories have become very powerful tools in materials design since these models can account for the effects of microstructure and its evolution with deformation. Numerical modeling based on crystal plasticity theories are performed at two different scales; the microscopic scale where crystal plasticity is employed to understand the deformation mechanisms and the effects of microstructure, and at the macroscopic scale in which crystal plasticity models are employed to generate input for simpler and computationally efficient macroscopic (phenomenological) models. In this paper, information which was not available through direct mechanical testing has been generated from measured initial texture and tensile data by employing a rate-dependent crystal plasticity model and Taylor theory of polycrystal plasticity. The results of the polycrystalline calculations along with experimental data have been used for the identification of the coefficients of a macroscopic anisotropic yield criterion. Illustration of this approach is provided for AA5754CC aluminum alloy. The results of the simulations are compared with each other and, for certain cases, compared with experimental data to demonstrate the strength of this multi-scale approach.