Back-stresses and geometrical hardening as competing mechanisms enhancing ductility in HCP metals

Abstract

By recourse of computational mechanics, back-stresses are unveiled as a major source for the increase in work hardening during forming of hexagonal close-packaged (hcp) metals. Polycrystalline visco-plastic self-consistent (VPSC) and crystal plasticity finite element modelling (CPFEM) simulations of tensile uniaxial experiments were used along with experimental texture information. Simulations took into account the analogous variation in the critical resolved shear stress (CRSS) values of each slip family that could result from an increase in the test temperature. As the CRSS ratio between secondary and primary slip families increased, two different contributions to the variation of the work hardening rate were observed depending on the simulation framework: (i) a decrease in the work hardening rate in VPSC simulations attributed to texture evolution or geometrical hardening and (ii) an increase in the work hardening rate in CPFEM simulations due to back-stresses. While geometrical hardening is present in both simulation frameworks, only CPFEM is able to capture the influence of back-stresses on the increase of the work hardening rate with temperature. The results provided here contribute to a better understanding of the deformation mechanisms present in warm forming of hcp metals, showing also that CPFEM is a better simulation framework to study warm forming of hcp metals.