Mesoscale modeling of microstructure and texture evolution during deformation processing of metals

The application of the finite element method to model the deformation of metals at the mesoscale to study the microstructure and texture evolution is described. The finite element discretization is applied directly to the various grains, and crystal plasticity is used as the constitutive basis to model the plastic deformation by crystallographic slip, and to evolve the slip system strength and crystal lattice orientation of the material. Applications of the methodology to detailed studies of the non-uniform deformations of individual grains, and effects of grain interactions on the distributions of deformation and stress in the microstructure are discussed.