On the Role of Local Grain Interactions on Twin Nucleation and Texture Evolution in Hexagonal Materials

Abstract

Texture evolution in plastically deformed HCP metals is strongly influenced by the nucleation and growth of deformation twins and twin variant selection. Statistically based EBSD analyses of deformed microstructures in HCP metals indicate that the nucleation of deformation twins depends on, among other factors, the local stress fields arising from neighboring grain interactions at grain boundaries [1]. Inspired by these findings a probability model for twin nucleation was developed [2,3], based on the activation of defect sources statistically occurring in grain boundaries. This nucleation model was implemented in a Visco-Plastic Self-Consistent (VPSC) code. Because the latter is based on an Effective Medium assumption and the inclusion formalism, it only provides average stress values in the grains, and the nature of local stress fields at grain boundaries had to be considered in a heuristic manner. In order to have better insight on the effect of local textures on twin nucleation, in this work we employ a viscoplastic full field Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) method as a numerical tool for conducting virtual experiments to study the role of crystal orientation and local neighbor grain interactions on stress localization close to the interfaces and, consequently, on twin nucleation in hexagonal materials, such as Zr and Mg.