Effect of relative grain size on the flow stress of polycrystalline FCC sheets

A dynamic explicit finite element code and rate-dependent elastic-viscoplastic polycrystalline model were used to simulate the simple tension test of annealing FCC polycrystal and 6111-T4 aluminum alloy sheet metal. The variability of flow stress was investigated, which was induced by various grain boundary constraints when the ratio of thickness-to-grain size was changed. The simulated results show that, when the relative grain size increases, the constraint of grain boundary will increase accordingly, which results in the increase of the flow stress of polycrystal. The results agree with experiments.