Study of fcc metal tension behaviour by

crystal plasticity finite element method

H. Dong*, J. C. Zhu, Z. H. Lai, L. Yong, R. D. Zhao and X. W. Yang
The crystal plasticity finite element method has been adopted to study the plastic deformation
behaviour, such as the slip system activation, the number and magnitude of the actived slip
system, the rotation character and the macromechanics response of face centred cubic (fcc)
single crystal metal during uniaxial tension. Five typical crystalline orientations, including four
types of typical fcc texture orientation: Goss orientation, copper orientation, S orientation and
brass texture, have been considered, and its effects to plastic deformation have been studied and
compared. The results show that the orientation between crystalline and loading direction will
influence the slipping character and the macromechanical response: the S crystalline orientation
(60, 32 and 65u) has the least number of active slip system (just only 3); the brass texture (35, 45
and 0u) has the smallest magnitude of crystalline lattice rotation; and the brass texture orientation
(35, 45 and 0u) has the highest yield stress value.
Keywords: fcc metal, Tension behaviour, Crystal plasticity, CP-FEM, Slip system

Introduction The plastic behaviour and micromechanical response

Metals with face centred cubic (fcc) are widely used for its
good plasticity and excellent processability. The plastic
deformation mechanism of fcc metal has been widely
investigated by numerical method because it is relatively
monotonic, i.e. usually just the slipping mechanism
needing to be considered. However, it should be noted
that the macromechanical properties express obvious
variations according to the crystal orientation, loading
direction and boundary condition.1–8
Crone et al.4 have studied the orientation dependence
of plastic slip near notches in ductile fcc single Cu
crystals. Nitta et al.5 paid attention to the effect of plastic
anisotropy and latent hardening in three-dimensional
single crystals on the formation of shear band. Su et al.7
investigated the texture evolution and non-uniformity in
plastic anisotropies of aluminium sheet under tension,
compression and shear deformation.
With the development of computing capability and
theoretical model, more and more powerful computer
simulation methods have been developed and widely used
in materials science.9 Recently, a novel method, i.e.
crystal plasticity finite element method (CP-FEM), which
combines crystallographic slip with the finite element
(FE) method, has been developed to investigate the
relationship between microscale characteristics (i.e. crys-
tallographic orientation and lattice constants) and
macroscale responses (stress, strain field distribution
and texture evolution).10
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of
Technology, Harbin 150001, China
*Corresponding author, email hedong@hit.edu.cn
of single crystal fcc metal are very important to study the
polycrystalline materials during complex plastic deforma-
tion process. As a novel method, CP-FEM is good at
solving multiscale problem. In the present paper, the
plastic deformation behaviour of fcc metal with five
different initial states, including slip system activation,
slipping and lattice rotation, macroscale response, stress/
strain distribution and crystalline orientation evolution,
has been studied by CP-FEM using UMAT11 of
ABAQUS software.
The present paper is organised as follows. In the next
section, the details of the CP-FEM theory are illustrated.
The model set-up, material constants and boundary
condition are described in the subsequent section. The
simulation results and discussions are presented in the
fourth section. The conclusions are drawn in the last
section.
General theory of crystal plasticity
The early theory on crystal plastic deformation was
studied by Taylor,12 which was mainly based on lattice
rotation and slipping. The basic theory was developed
and improved by other researchers.13–18
Kinematic equation
In the Cartesian rectangular coordinate system, the
deformation at any point can be described by the
deformation gradient F, and it can be decomposed into
two parts: elastic part Fe and plastic part Fp, as shown in
Fig. 1, i.e.
F ~F e F p (1)
At the same time, the deformation gradient F also can be
expressed by the velocity gradient

ß 2012 Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining

Published by Maney on behalf of the Institute
Received 22 December 2010; accepted 8 September 2011
788 DOI 10.1179/1743284711Y.0000000090 Materials Science and Technology 2012 VOL 28 NO 7
 Dong et al. Study of fcc metal tension behaviour by CP-FEM

1 Sketch of elastic–plastic decomposition: plastic slip,

rotation and elastic stretch

Table 1 Material constants for hypothetical fcc materials

in present study 2 Cubic model in ABAQUS/CAE window
:
C11 C12 C44 c0 m

168 GPa 120 GPa 75 GPa 0.1 0.1 where Le and Lp denote the elastic and plastic parts
h0 haa hab ts t0
541 MPa 1 1 109.5 MPa 60.8 MPa
respectively.
The velocity gradient L can be decomposed into
symmetric part D and asymmetric part W
:
L~ F F {1 (2) L~DzW (5)

Then, from equations (1) and (2) Le ~De zW e (6)

: {1 : {1 {1
L~ F e F e zF e ( F P F p )F e (3)
: : Lp ~Dp zW p (7)
e {1 {1 {1
Letting Le ~ F F e and Lp ~F e ( F P F p )F e , then e p
where D and D are the elastic and plastic deformation
L~Le zLp (4) rates respectively, which are defined as

3 Schematic diagram of relationship between crystal orientation and load direction, represented by Euler angle: a speci-
men and coordinate, b (0u, 0u, 0u), c (0u, 45u, 0u), d (90u, 35u, 45u), e (60u, 32u, 65u) and f (35u, 45u, 0u)

Materials Science and Technology 2012 VOL 28 NO 7 789

Dong et al. Study of fcc metal tension behaviour by CP-FEM

4 Shape deformation and rotation of cubic model after tensile deformation, strain rate of 0?001 S21 and strain of 0?5:
a initial state, b (0u, 0u, 0u), c (0u, 45u, 0u), d (90u, 30u, 45u), e (60u, 32u, 65u) and f (35u, 45u, 0u)

5 von Mises stress distribution at 0?5 and 0?001 S21: a (0u, 0u, 0u), b (0u, 45u, 0u), c (90u, 30u, 45u) homogeneous stress
distribution, d (60u, 32u, 65u) and e (35u, 45u, 0u) extremely heterogeneous

790 Materials Science and Technology 2012 VOL 28 NO 7

 Dong et al. Study of fcc metal tension behaviour by CP-FEM

6 Stress–strain curves with different initial situations: rela-

tionship between crystal orientation and load direction

Lp z(LP )T X n
:
Dp ~ ~ P(a) c(a) (8)
2 a~1

Lp {(LP )T X n
:
W p~ ~ v(a) c(a) (9)
2 a~1

The elastic deformation rate of lattice De and rotation

rate We can be derived from De5D2Dp and
We5W2Wp.

Constitutive law
According to Hill and Rice’s13 study, when we assume
that the crystal’s elasticity is unaffected by slipping, the
relationship between the elastic deformation rate of
lattice De and the Jaumann rate sLe of Cauchy stress can
be expressed as follows
s+e zs(I : De )~L : De (10) 7 Shear strains in each slip system with different initial states
Le at 0?4 strain: a (0u, 0u, 0u), b (0u, 45u, 0u), c (90u, 30u, 45u), d
where I is a unite tensor, L is the elastic module and s
(60u, 32u, 65u) and e (35u, 45u, 0u). Corresponding slip sys-
is the stress rate rotated around the crystal axis
tem in horizontal axes: 1, (1 1 1)[ 0 21 1 ]; 2, (1 1 1)[ 1 0 21 ];
s+e ~s+ z(W {W e )s{s(W {W e ) (11) 3, (1 1 1) [ 21 1 0 ]; 4, (21 1 1)[1 0 1 ]; 5, (21 1 1) [1 1 0]; 6,
(21 1 1)[0 21 1]; 7, (1 21 1)[0 1 1]; 8, (1 21 1)[1 1 0]; 9,
We assume that crystal slipping obeys the Schmid law, (1 21 1) [1 0 21]; 10 (1 1 21) [0 1 1]; 11, (1 1 21) [1 0 1]; 12,
and the Schmid stress is defined by (1 1 21) [21 1 0]

t(a) ~m(a) ss(a) (12) X

: :
ga ~ hab jcb j (15)
Then, the Schmid stress rate is
a
:  
t(a) ~m(a) s+e zs(I : De ){De szsDe s(a) (13) where hab is the slip hardening module
hab ~½qz(1{q)dab hb (16)
Hardening model The concrete form of hb is described by following equations
In the present research, the power law hardening model  
: h0 c
has been employed. The slipping rate c(a) of the ath slip hb ~h0 sec h2 (17)
system in a rate dependent crystalline solid is determined ts {t0
by the corresponding resolved shear stress t(a) as where ts is a material constant, representing the saturation
 (a) 1=m values of slip resistance, t0 is the yield stress of the slipping
: t   
c(a) ~c(a)   sign t(a) (14) system and c is the shear strain on all slip systems.
0  (a) 
g
: Crystal plasticity FE method and model
where c(a) 0 is the reference strain rate on slip system a, g
(a)

is a variable that describes the current strain hardening set-up

of that slip system and m is the strain rate sensitivity
exponent. Crystal plasticity FE method
The stain hardening rate is calculated by the following In the present work, the crystal plasticity theory described
equation in part 2 has been coded in FORTRAN language and

Materials Science and Technology 2012 VOL 28 NO 7 791

Dong et al. Study of fcc metal tension behaviour by CP-FEM
8 Crystalline direction (111) rotation trace during tensile deformation process under different initial situations: a (0u, 0u, 0u), b
(0u, 45u, 0u), c (90u, 30u, 45u), d (60u, 32u, 65u) and e (35u, 45u, 0u)
coupled with the commercial FEM software ABAQUS/
standard by means of the user subroutines ‘UMAT’.
Materials model and constant
As previously stated, we mainly focus on the crystalline
orientation, boundary condition effects, slipping system
activation and macromechanical response during the
uniaxial tension deforming process, so a hypothetical fcc
material that is based on pure copper is introduced in
the present work. The material constants of the CP-
FEM model are shown in Table 1.19
ABAQUS/CAE model
A 10610610 mm cubic model has been built (Fig. 2).
The cubic is meshed by a 26262 grid, and the C3D8R
element is adopted. The boundary condition at the
bottom surface is as follows: U25UR15UR350. The
reference point (RP) at (0, 15, 0) position was introduced
into the FE model to facilitate load, boundary condition
fixing and result analysing. According to the property of
different coupling types11 and current studying, the
distributing coupling was adopted to connect the RP
and FE model. The boundary and load on the RP is
U255 mm and UR15UR350.
The five types of situations (Goss, copper, S and brass
texture orientation) has been built up to study the
crystalline orientation effects, as shown in Fig. 3.
Results and discussion
Deformation and rotation
According to the crystal plasticity theory in the section
on ‘General theory of crystal plasticity’, plastic defor-
mation was based on lattice rotation and slipping. In
this presentation, the rotation angle of the cubic model
792 Materials Science and Technology 2012 VOL 28
relative to the initial state represents an accumulation of
lattice rotation. The rotation angle along the Y axis was
calculated by CP-FEM subroutine and exported from
the calculation results at RP with 0?5 tensile strains. The
shape deformation and rotation angle are shown in
Fig. 4. One can see that the pillar-like sample shows not
only elongation in the loading direction but also
rotation with different angles: 2?76, 6?06, 21?43,
23?68 and 24?68u (anticlockwise denoted by ‘z’).
The von Mises stress distribution is given in Fig. 5: in
situations a, b and c, the stress field is homogeneous
although its magnitude is different. However, the stress
filed is heterogeneous in the other situation, especially
situation d, which keeps the S orientation (Q1560u,
w532u and Q2565u) relationship between the crystal
orientation and the load direction. The reason will be
analysed completely in the later section.
The stress–strain curves are plotted in Fig. 6. The
curves have the similar shape but different yield stress/
strain points. It is worth to paying attention to the yield
stress value at different initial situations: when the [001]
direction (crystal orientation) is parallel to the Z
direction (load direction), seeing Fig. 3b, the yield stress
is only 410 MPa; however, for the ‘brass orientation’
relationship, the value of yield stress increases to
855 MPa. The other conditions show the yield stress
value between them. Particularly, when they keep the
‘Goss orientation’ and ‘copper orientation’, they have
almost the same stress–strain curves.
Crystal slip and rotation
In order to describe slip system activation, the shear
strains in each slip system with different initial states
have been investigated, as shown in Fig. 7.
NO 7

In situation a, there are eight slip systems that have
been actived, and the number of positive and negative
directions is just equivalent: 4 and 4.
In situations b and c, they have similar actived slip
system results; only four slip systems have been actived
in total: three slip systems in the negative direction and
one in the positive direction.
In situation d, the shear strain distribution is very
special: not only the numbers of slip system with positive
and negative directions are different but also the
magnitude of the shear strain is various. This may lead
to the cubic model large deformation and non-uniform
distribution of von Mises stress (Fig. 5d).
The last situation e, obviously, has the character that
is contained in situations a, b, c and d. First, the
numbers of active slip system are relatively large (the
number is 6). Second, the shear strain shows a large
magnitude (compared with Fig. 7a) and a homogenous
distribution (compared with Fig. 7d). Therefore, as the
results shown in Fig. 6, situation e has the highest yield
strength.
The crystalline lattice orientation evolution is given in
Fig. 8. In situation e, the crystalline direction just rotates
with a small angle during the whole plastic deformation
process. It means that the crystalline lattice is difficult to
rotate when the crystalline direction and load direction
keep the brass texture orientation relationship. In
addition, it also leads to the highest yield strength.
Conclusions
The slip system activation, the magnitude and direction
of shear strain in different slip systems and the crystal-
line orientation evolution in different situations have
been studied. The following conclusions could be drawn.
1. The orientation relationship between crystalline
and load direction will affect the slip system activation
situation. It will affect not only the slip system activation
Dong et al. Study of fcc metal tension behaviour by CP-FEM
time but also the numbers of slip system and degree of
slipping.
2. The orientation relationship between crystalline
and load direction will affect the crystalline lattice
rotation.
3. The number of activated slip system will affect the
yield stress of crystalline materials.
4. The extent of slipping system activation and
crystalline lattice rotation will affect the yield stress of
crystalline materials.
References
1. D. Raabe, Z. Zhao and F. Roters: Scr. Mater., 2004, 50, 1085–1090.
2. Z. Q. Wang, I. J. Beyerlein and R. Lesar: Int. J. Plast., 2009, 25,
26–48.
3. H. Conrad and W. D. Cao: in ‘The Johannes Weertman
Symposium’ (ed. R. J. Arsenault et al.), 321–327; 1996,
Warrendale, PA, TMS.
4. W. C. Crone, T. W. Shield and A. Creuziger: J. Mech. Phys. Solids,
2004, 52, 85–112.
5. J. Nitta, K. Ito, S. Kanno and T. Sagawa: J. Phys. IV, 2003, 105,
63–70.
6. H. Sakamoto, E. Nakamachi and L. S. Jong: ‘The mechanical
behavior of materials X’, Key Eng. Mater., 2007, 345–346, 145–148.
7. S. Z. Su, M. Z. Li, D. P. Li and H. Takahashi: Acta Metall. Sinica,
2001, 37, 531–536.
8. H. van Swygenhoven, A. Caro and D. Farkas: Scr. Mater., 2001,
44, 1513–1516.
9. D. Raabe: Adv. Mater., 2002, 14, 639–650.
10. F. Roters: Comp. Mater. Sci., 2005, 32, 509–517.
11. ABAQUS, ver. 5.7, 1998.
12. G. I. Taylor: J. Inst. Met., 1938, 62, 307–324.
13. R. Hill and J. R. Rice: J. Mech. Phys. Solids, 1972, 20, 401–412.
14. R. J. Asaro: J. Appl. Mech., Trans. ASME, 1983, 50, 921–934.
15. D. Okumura, Y. Higashi, K. Sumida and N. Ohno: Int. J. Plast.,
2007, 23, 1148–1166.
16. H. Omatsu and H. Noguchi: Comput. Meth., 2006, 351–355.
17. D. Raabe, F. Roters and Y. Wang: Proc. 14th Int. Conf. on
‘Textures of materials’, Leuven, Belgium, July 2005, 1529–1534.
18. H. W. Li, H. Yang and Z. C. Sun: Int. J. Plast., 2008, 24, 267–288.
19. J. Alcala, O. Casals and J. Ocenasek: J. Mech. Phys. Solids, 2008,
56, 3277–3303.
Materials Science and Technology 2012 VOL 28 NO 7 793