Local plasticity of Cu-Al polycrystals - measurements and FEM-simulation

Abstract
Earlier deformation experiments and simulations on coarse-grained Cu-5at%Al polycrystals have been extended to Cu-5at%Al with the aim to compare the localization of plastic deformation. This is characterized quantitatively by two complementary methods, i.e. (i) in-situ recording of slip band formation by optical microscopy and (ii) measurement of local strain distribution by an optical field method using random gratings. The measured distribution of local deformation is compared with quasi-2D FEM calculations applying a crystal plasticity based model to the realistic geometry and crystallite orientations measured before and after deformation by the Backscatter Kikuchi Pattern method on the same specimens. Reasonable agreement is found with deviations arising from the use of a code developed for plasticity of pure Cu in the simulations.