Experimental investigation and through process crystal plasticity-static recrystallization modeling of temperature and strain rate effects during hot compression of AA6063

In this paper, a through process crystal plasticity-static recrystallization model to simulate hot compression in AA6063 is presented. A new temperature and strain-rate dependent hardening model is proposed and implemented in an in-house rate-dependent crystal plasticity framework. Using experimental Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) results, the modified crystal plasticity framework is calibrated, verified and further validated with experimental hot compression results from 400°C to 600°C and from 0.001 s−1 to 10 s−1 on AA6063. The proposed hardening model successfully captures the flow behavior from AA6063 hot compression results at various temperatures and strain-rates. Subsequently, the texture and resolved shear stress results from crystal plasticity framework are used as inputs to an integration point based static recrystallization (SRX) model. SRX model first finds possible nucleation sites and then grows them to reduce the stored energy in the system. SRX model is used to predict the recrystallized textures and grain size after hot compression in AA6063. Predicted texture and grain size at various temperatures and strain-rates are compared to experimental 2D XRD and optical microscopy results. The predicted results show good agreement with corresponding experimental data.