Exploring the Structure–Property Relationship in Spheroidized C45EC Steel Using Full Phase Crystal Plasticity Numerical Simulations

Abstract

Herein, micromechanical simulations for three different states of spheroidized steel (C45EC) are conducted under quasi‐static tensile loading based on the actual texture and crystallographic orientation from electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) data. Data denoising is conducted with MTex (open‐source Toolbox with MATLAB) for cleaning up the EBSD data. Crystal plasticity‐based full phase numerical simulations are performed on these constructed representative volume elements (RVEs) to analyze the local stress and strain evolution in C45EC steels. The local results of the simulations exhibit important insights into deformation evolution influenced by the size and clustering of cementite particles as well as crystallographic orientations of ferrite grains. It is observed that the full phase simulation model helps predict the local microstructural details for overall mechanically improved properties of the steels. Spheroidized steel samples (97%) show the most favorable mechanical response as adequate strain hardening with extended elongation is desired for cold‐working of parts. The current work is another step forward to fine‐tune the microstructural attributes of medium carbon steels for an improved mechanical response.

Influence of Non-Metallic Inclusions on Local Deformation and Damage Behavior of Modified 16MnCrS5 Steel

“…Since the previous works have shown that the second phase inclusions are major players in defining the formability of the material [15,41,55], a special focus was given to them in this work. Previous work [51][52][53][54][55][56] shows that the morphology and distribution of the second phase inclusions dictate the formability limit and damage degradation in a material.…”

“…This noise was reduced using an intelligent algorithm implemented on the MTEX toolbox with MATLAB [40]. The procedural details of the EBSD data cleaning and the developed algorithm are published elsewhere [41]. Therefore, readers are encouraged to refer to that work for further details.…”

Transformation of 2D RVE Local Stress and Strain Distributions to 3D Observations in Full Phase Crystal Plasticity Simulations of Dual-Phase Steels

“…This large local microstructural heterogeneity yields significant local strain contrast during deformation. The microstructural distribution, grain size, material properties, and grain orientation are adopted from previously published work [39][40][41]. This article investigates different parameters for varying the overall number of grains, strain levels, and volume fractions.…”

A Full-Field Crystal Plasticity Study on the Bauschinger Effect Caused by Non-Shearable Particles and Voids in Aluminium Single Crystals

“…However, their use of a high-resolution CPFEM to model the influence of the particles can hardly be justified, as it was conducted without the spatial resolution of each particle and without GND mechanisms that would be expected for submicron secondary particles. Umar et al [25] used the DAMASK software for two-dimensional simulations of an SSRVE with cementite in spheroidised medium-carbon steels. Qayyum et al [26] discussed how to efficiently use as coarse a resolution as possible and thin three-dimensional RVEs to save computing time for particle distributions.…”