Implementation of VPSC polycrystal model into rigid plastic finite element method and its application to Erichsen test of Mg alloy

A methodology on the multiscale simulation of metal forming processes is presented, which fully integrates the visco-plastic self-consistent (VPSC) polycrystal model into rigid plastic finite element method (FEM). To accurately predict the material behavior of a magnesium alloy from the microstructural level, the VPSC crystal plasticity model was used as a constitutive equation in this methodology. An optimization program VPSC-GA was developed in order to calculate the hardening parameters for each slip and twin mode of a single crystal from a couple of simple tension/compression tests. The existing constitutive equation for rigid plastic FEM is modified using the deviatoric stress components and the derivatives of them with respect to strain rate components. The stiffness matrix and the load vector were derived based on a new approach and implemented into DEFORMTM-3D via a user subroutine which handles stiffness matrix in elemental level. An application to the Erichsen tests of magnesium alloys was done and the stretch formability of two different Mg alloy sheets was analyzed using the results of both experiment and simulation.