Advances in sheet metal forming analyses: dealing with mechanical anisotropy from crystallographic texture

Progress in computer simulation of sheet forming operations depends on accurate characterisation of the sheet strength. The strength exhibits anisotropy arising from its crystallographic texture. Approaches to incorporating representations for strength anisotropy in finite element formulations based on polycrystal plasticity and texture are reviewed. The approaches include ones that employ analytical (closed form) representations of the yield surface or plastic potential and others based on piecewise (numerical) representations. An approach based on directly embedding polycrystal plasticity without a macroscopic yield surface per se is summarised. Applications of the various approaches are presented, some related to forming operations such as deep drawing and others to formability tests such as the limiting dome height test.