Combining microstructural characterization with crystal plasticity and phase-field modelling for the study of static recrystallization in pure aluminium

Abstract

An in-depth understanding of the recrystallization process in alloys is critical to manufacturing metal parts with superior properties. However, the development of recrystallization model under various processing conditions is still in its early research stage and becoming an urgent demand for both the manufacturing industry and scientific research. In this work, a validated numerical model that is capable of predicting the recrystallized grain structure, incubation time for the grain nucleation and texture evolution, was developed using a Kobayashi, Warren and Carter (KWC) phase-field model coupled with crystal plasticity finite element (CPFE) analysis. Through characterising the microstructure evolution of static recrystallization (SRX) by quasi-in-situ Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) mapping, insights into nucleation position, grain growth rate and orientation correlation between nucleated grains and initial grains were established and transferred into the computational model. This model enables a reliable and accurate prediction of recrystallized microstructure and texture for pure aluminium under different processing routes. It is believed that this physically-based modelling work in mesoscale will motivate further micromechanical modelling studies using crystal plasticity to predict the performance of structural alloys after thermomechanical processing.

Investigation on Recrystallization Behavior of Cold‐Rolled Silicon Steel in Continuous Heating with Three‐Point Bending Testing

“…where n is the Avrami exponent-related nucleation and growth mechanism during recrystallization, which is generally within the range of 1-4, [36] k 0 is the pre-exponential factor upon time and temperature, R is the ideal gas constant, E is the activation energy of recrystallization, and θ is the heating rate. When the temperature reaches T p , Equation ( 6) can be transformed into the Ozawa equation with…”

Survey of Modeling and Simulation Techniques for Advanced Manufacturing Technologies Volume I – Predicting Initial Microstructures

“…Different phase-field formulations of recrystallization differ in the formulation of this free-energy functional, with inclusion of more terms (i.e., incorporating more physics) adding to the numerical and computational complexity. The coupled phase-field crystal plasticity approach has been employed to simulate both static and dynamic recrystallization processes [329]- [333] as well as for systems with anisotropic grain boundary properties [334]. The phase-field approach to recrystallization may become computationally expensive when considering large number of grains.…”

How Would the Deformation Bands Affect Recrystallization in Pure Aluminium?

“…The KWC phase-field model [21] was applied to simulate the grain growth of RX. The grain growth of nucleated grains driven by the stored energy as Equation ( 1) follows the time-evolution of g and h as Equation ( 2) and (3) [18,40].…”

“…The variable, g, was set to be 0 for deformed grains and 1 for RXed grains. The variable, h, was the value of / 2 extracted from the Euler angle ½/ 1 ; U; / 2 since the model was only performed in two dimensions [21].…”

“…Therefore, it is essential to understand how the grain nucleates based on the heterogeneous deformed microstructure at the grain level through experiments, since nucleated positions, nucleated orientations and the number of nucleated grains are all determined at this stage for the RX process [5,13,18,20,21]. The heterogeneities in the deformed metal are generally caused by a slip, slip band, deformation band and shear band [2] (see Fig.…”