Influence of boundary conditions on strain field analysis for polycrystalline finite element simulations

This paper presents a first validation of a novel methodology for identifying the parameters of a crystallographic elastoplastic constitutive law. This is accomplished by comparing simulation and experimental results at different length scales: the microstructure scale and the representative volume element scale. Experimentally, the microscopic strain fields and the microstrucural characteristics can be obtained only at the surface of the specimen. As a consequence, in finite element simulations only at the surface there is a oneto- one correspondence between the mesh and the experimental observed grain morphology. In this paper, the morphology of the subsurface grains is obtained by a simple extension in the thickness direction of the surface morphology. The aim of this study is then to verify whether the surface data contain sufficient information for the identification of the parameters of the constitutive law. © 2009 Lavoisier, Paris.