Simulation of polycrystalline aluminum tensile test with crystal plasticity finite element method

The crystal plasticity was implemented in the finite element method(FEM) software ABAQUS through the user subroutine UMAT. By means of discretizing the space at the grain level with the Voronoi diagram method, a polycrystal model was built and used in the FEM analysis. The initial orientation of each grain was generated based on the orientation distribution function(ODF). The developed model was successfully applied in simulation of polycrystalline aluminium samples deformed by the tensile tests. The theoretical strain-stress relation was in good agreement with the experimental result. The simulation results show that the grain size has significant effect on the deformation behavior. The initial plastic deformation usually occurs at grain boundaries, and multiple slip often results in an enhanced local hardening at grain boundaries.