Development of Multi-Scale Finite Element Analysis Codes for High Formability Sheet Metal Generation.

In this study, the dynamic- and static-explicit multi-scale finite element (F.E.) codes are developed by employing the homogenization method, the crystalplasticity constitutive equation and SEM-EBSD measurement based polycrystal model. These can predict the crystal morphological change and the hardening evolution at the micro level, and the macroscopic plastic anisotropy evolution. These codes are applied to analyze the asymmetrical rolling process, which is introduced to control the crystal texture of the sheet metal for generating a high formability sheet metal. These codes can predict the yield surface and the sheet formability by analyzing the strain path dependent yield, the simple sheet forming process, such as the limit dome height test and the cylindrical deep drawing problems. It shows that the shear dominant rolling process, such as the asymmetric rolling, generates “high formability” textures and eventually the high formability sheet. The texture evolution and the high formability of the newly generated sheet metal experimentally were confirmed by the SEM-EBSD measurement and LDH test. It is concluded that these explicit type crystallographic homogenized multi-scale F.E. code could be a comprehensive tool to predict the plastic induced texture evolution, anisotropy and formability by the rolling process and the limit dome height test analyses. © 2007 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]