A polycrystal plasticity-cellular automaton integrated modeling method for continuous dynamic recrystallization and its application to AA2196 alloy

Continuous dynamic recrystallization usually dominates the microstructural evolution in hot working of aluminum alloys, in which the high-angle grain boundaries of new grains mainly originate from the gradual increase in subgrain misorientation angles. In this work, an integrated computational method is proposed to simulate continuous dynamic recrystallization process of aluminum alloys by coupling three-dimensional cellular automaton and visco-plastic self-consistent models. The stress response, dislocation accumulation and recovery, and evolution of crystal orientations are computed in the context of polycrystal plasticity; the formation and rotation of subgrains, followed by stored energy and curvature-driven boundary migration, are captured and visualized by cellular automaton. The non-octahedral slip mode {110}<110> is additionally introduced to capture the 〈001〉 texture during hot compression. A universal cell topology deformation method is adopted to achieve an effective track of grain morphology evolution during plastic deformation. The proposed simulation framework is validated through simulating the isothermal uniaxial compression process of AA2196 alloy under different temperatures and strain rates. The orientation dependence of CDRX during compression is numerically reproduced by correlating the subgrain formation and rotation process with the activation state of slip systems. The simulated macroscopic flow stress, 3D microstructure and inherent microstructural characteristics such as subgrain size, subgrain boundaries and textures are in good agreement with the experimental results. The proposed method provides an effective and efficient tool for multi-scale simulation of hot forming process of aluminum alloys.