Consideration of grain-size effect and kinetics in the plastic deformation of metal polycrystals

Abstract This work extends the constitutive model for the prediction of grain-size dependent hardening in f.c.c. polycrystalline metals proposed by Acharya and Beaudoin [1] (Grain-size effect in fcc viscoplastic polycrystals at moderate strains, 1999, in press) to include effects of temperature and strain rate dependence. A comparison is made between model predictions and compression data, taken at varying temperature and strain rate, for pure Ag having two different grain sizes. It is shown that an initial increase in yield stress and concomitant decrease in hardening rate for a fine-grained material, relative to a coarse-grained counterpart, can be captured through initialization of a state variable serving to describe stress response at prescribed reference conditions of temperature and strain rate. A grain-size dependence of hardening rate during parabolic (stage III) hardening is characterized by the evolution of net dislocation density in a finite element model of a polycrystal aggregate. Finally, observations from simulations of deformation of the polycrystal aggregate are introduced into an existing macroscopic constitutive model for metal plasticity based on the mechanical threshold.