Modelling direction-dependent hardening in magnesium sheet forming simulations

In this work, a model capturing anisotropic hardening during plastic deformation under monotonic loading is proposed. For this purpose, the anisotropic plastic potential coefficients are assumed to be functions of a measure of the accumulated plastic strain. This model is applied to describe the plastic behavior of a magnesium alloy (ZM21) sheet at room temperature. The selected plastic potential accounts for the main features of Mg alloy plasticity, i.e., anisotropy and strength-differential (SD) effects. All the accumulated plastic strain dependent coefficients of the phenomenological model are determined from input data generated with a crystal plasticity approach. They are optimized to best capture the accumulated strain dependent potentials computed with crystal plasticity. The R-value (Lankford coefficient) anisotropy is used as an independent measure for the assessment of the approximation quality. This model is implemented into a finite element (FE) code and successfully validated through the numerical simulations of the cup drawing test. The calculated earing profile obtained with the proposed hardening model is compared to results assuming isotropic hardening for various plausible shapes of the plastic potential. Although the ear and valley numbers and positions are similar in all cases, the height differences between peaks and valleys are strongly dependent on the type of constitutive approach used in the simulation.