Mechanism-based constitutive modeling of ZEK100 magnesium alloy with crystal plasticity and in-situ HEXRD experiment

The constitutive behavior of a hexagonal close-packed (HCP) polycrystalline ZEK100 magnesium alloy was investigated using combined high energy X-ray diffraction (HEXRD) from a synchrotron source and crystal plasticity modeling approach. The in-situ tensile test data coupled with the HEXRD enabled the tracking of the lattice strain evolution during deformation. The microscopic behavior represented by lattice strain and the macroscopic behavior represented by stress-strain curves were then used together as objective function to estimate the critical resolved shear stress (CRSS) and hardening parameters of available slip and deformation twin systems in the ZEK100 alloy. An enhanced predominant twinning reorientation (ePTR) scheme was proposed in the current work, and the ePTR parameters were determined for the first time by the use of basal plane peak intensity along loading direction measured from HEXRD. Two crystal plasticity models, the computationally efficient elastic-plastic self-consistent (EPSC) and crystal plasticity finite element (CPFE) models, were developed incorporating the deformation twinning for the HCP-structured metals. The determined constitutive parameters were further validated by comparing the predicted deformation texture with the measured one. The work provides a useful and computationally-efficient modeling scheme to understand the slip/twin induced deformation behaviors of the ZEK100 alloy in micro- and macro-scales.