AN INTEGRATED CRYSTAL PLASTICITY FE SYSTEM FOR MICROFORMING SIMULATION

Abstract

Based on Voronoi tessellation and the probability theory, a VGRAIN system is created for the generation of grains and grain boundaries for micromaterials. This system requires physical parameters obtained from microstructures of materials, such as the average, minimum and maximum grain sizes. Numerical procedures have been established to link the physical parameters of a material to the control variable in a gamma distribution equation and a method has been developed to solve the probability equation. These are the basis for the development of the VGRAIN system, which can be used to generate different grain structures and shapes that follow a certain pattern according to the probability theory. Statistical analyses have been carried out to investigate the distribution of generated virtual grains. The generated virtual microstructure is then implemented in the commercial FE code, ABAQUS, for mesh generation and micromechanics analysis using crystal plasticity (CP) equations for face-centered cubic (FCC) materials, which are implemented in the commercial FE solver, ABAQUS, through the user-defined subroutines, VUMAT/UMAT. FE analyses have been carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the integrated system for the investigation of localized straining and necking, encountered in microforming processes, such as extrusion of micropins, deformation of microfilms and hydroforming of microtubes.