The plastic anisotropy of sheet metal is usually caused by preferred orientation of grains, developed by mechanical deformation and thermal treatment. In the present study, the influence of the mechanical deformation by cold rolling on the development of the preferred orientation and resulting plastic anisotropy of an aluminium sheet was investigated. The investigation was performed by two steps. First, A1-5052 sheet was cold-rolled to five different thicknesses and the histories of the mechanical deformation due to rolling were obtained by the rigid-plastic finite-element method. Then, the preferred orientation and the plastic anisotropy developed in the sheet for each thickness were predicted by deformation texture theories and r-value prediction theories, respectively, and compared with experimental results. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.
