A full-field strategy to take texture-induced anisotropy into account during FE simulations of metal forming processes

During metal forming, the mechanical properties in all locations of the part evolve, usually in a heterogeneous way. In principle, this should be taken into account when performing finite element (FE) simulations of the forming process, by modeling the evolution of the mechanical properties in every integration point of the FE mesh and coupling the result back to the FEshell. This is the meaning of the term ‘full-field modeling.’ The issue is developed further with focus on the evolution of texture and plastic anisotropy. It is explained that in principle, such fullfield modeling would require a gigantic computational effort which (at least at present) would be out of reach of most research organizations. A methodology is then presented to overcome this difficulty by using efficient models for texture updating and for texture-based plastic anisotropy, and by optimizing the overall calculation scheme without sacrificing the accuracy of the texture prediction. Some of the first results (obtained for cup drawing of anisotropic deep drawing steel) are shown, including comparison to experimental results. Possible future applications of the method are proposed.