polymer substrates. The type of conductive filler considerably determines the characteristics of nucleation, growth and the electroforming of the product microstructures.The development of an ideal 2-component combination, also besides the commercially available polymers, is necessary. Here, also the use of polymer material, which is intrinsically conductive because of the chemical polymer structure, will promise interesting results.A further important part of investigations will be the production of metallic mold inserts for the injection molding of templates of the important hole type and the following electroforming and replication.Electrochemical investigations like voltamograms i = f(E) and transients i = f(t) on the properties of conductive polymers will exhibit detailed qualitative and quantitative information about the processes at the interface polymer-electrolyte. This article presents an investigation on the evolution of the crystallographic texture and of the equivalent strain distribution during simple shear deformation of a pure Al single crystal. Previous studies in which we presented detailed comparisons between crystal plasticity finite element simulations and corresponding experiments under plane strain load revealed in part a disturbing influence of friction on the results. [1±6] This effect impedes the validation of advanced crystal plasticity finite element methods.
ReceivedFriction between the tool and the specimen introduces two main problems into such tests rendering validation efforts a difficult task: First, it introduces additional shear stress components of unknown magnitude. Second, its magnitude changes during loading in an unknown fashion as deformation proceeds. Hence, a more quantitative approach lies in using simple shear deformation experiments since they do not involve friction.The structure of this article is as follows: First, we provide a concise review of earlier work on simple shear experiments. Second, we describe the experimental procedure. Third, we give a brief introduction to the model approach and explain how we determined the parameters of the underlying constitutive model. Fourth, we compare the experimental observations with the model predictions in terms of the texture evolution and the strain distribution.