Process metallurgy analyses of sheet rolling by multi-scale finite element method based on thermal elastic crystal plasticity theory

Abstract

In this study, we analysed the final stage of hot rolling process of 6000 series aluminium alloy sheet by introducing the thermal effects, which caused by the plastic deformation induced heat generation. To consider thermal effects, we formulate the critical resolved shear stress, initial hardening ratio, and hardening coefficient in the crystal plasticity model as temperature depend approximation functions at the micro-scale. Simultaneously temperature depend functions are adopted in Norton’s low at the macro-scale. The texture evolution analysis code can apply to control the crystal structure to design a high formability sheet metal in the warm sheet rolling processes. Numerical results of thermal elastic plastic multi-scale finite element analyses have shown the temperature effects on the texture evolutions in the final stage of warm rolling process. It is confirmed that our process metallurgy analysis code can predict the microscopic crystal texture evolution in the industrial warm rolling process.