Influence of in-grain mesh resolution on the prediction of deformation textures in fcc polycrystals by crystal plasticity FEM

The ability of three different crystal plasticity finite element models to predict deformation textures in face-centered cubic metals observed in experiments is assessed. These methods are: (i) Taylor averaging, in which the interactions of the grains are considered in a homogenized manner; (ii) low-resolution simulation (LRS), in which grain interactions are considered explicitly albeit with low resolution; and (iii) direct numerical simulation (DNS), which provides high-resolution details of the deformation fields inside the grains and of the grain interactions. A quantitative comparison of the numerical results provided by these three methods against experimental plane-strain compression textures is performed via orientation distribution functions and fiber line analysis. It is found that some details of the texture which are inaccessible to either Taylor averaging and LRS approaches are captured by the DNS approach. This can be explained by the ability of the high-resolution DNSmethod to describe details of the grain interactions, including heterogeneous deformation under homogeneous macroscopic strain and smooth gradients of lattice rotations inside the grains which are missing in low-resolution models. 2006 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.