An Elastic-Plastic Analysis of Polycrystalline Structure Using Crystal Plasticity Modelling – Theory and Benchmark Tests

Numerical simulations of tension and shear tests for a polycrystalline, anisotropic material were performed using crystal plasticity theory. The slip was considered here as the main mechanism of plastic deformation. Constitutive equations to describe the elastic-plastic deformation caused by the slip are presented. The generation and meshing of various shapes geometries (cubic and paddy shapes) with randomly-orientated grains by means of open source program NEPER program was shown. The Voronoi tessellation was used in order to include morphological properties of a crystalline material. The selected results of elastic-plastic analyses (stress, strain distributions and the macroscopic stress-strain resulting from homogenization) are presented here. The results obtained show the non-uniform distribution of stress and strain for different grains associated with their crystal orientation. The crystal plasticity finite element modelling of materials subjected to plastic deformation is important for microstructure-based mechanical predictions, as well as for the engineering design and to perform simulations involving not only the change of a material’s shape at a macro level but also the phenomena occurring in material in a micro-scale.