INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS PUBLISHING

MODELLING AND SIMULATION IN MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

Modelling Simul. Mater. Sci. Eng. 12 (2004) 511527

PII: S0965-0393(04)76087-8

A mesoscopic approach for predicting sheet metal

formability
P D Wu1 , S R MacEwen1 , D J Lloyd1 and K W Neale2
1 Alcan International Limited, Kingston Research and Development Centre, Kingston,
Ontario K7L 5L9, Canada
2 University of Sherbrooke, Faculty of Engineering, Sherbrooke, Quebec, J1K 2R1, Canada

Received 4 December 2003

Published 12 March 2004
Online at stacks.iop.org/MSMSE/12/511 (DOI: 10.1088/0965-0393/12/3/011)
Abstract
A mesoscopic approach for constructing a forming limit diagram (FLD) is
developed. The approach is based on the concept of a unit cell. The unit
cell is macroscopically infinitely small and thus represents a material point in
the sheet, and is microscopically finitely large and thus contains a sufficiently
large number of grains. The responses of the unit cell under biaxial tension
are calculated using the finite element method. Each element of a mesh/unit
cell represents an orientation and the constitutive response at an integration
point is described by the single crystal plasticity theory. It is demonstrated that
the limit strains are the natural outcomes of the mesoscopic approach, and the
artificial initial imperfection necessitated by the macroscopic MK approach is
not relevant in the mesoscopic approach. The effects of strain-rate sensitivity,
single slip hardening and latent hardening, texture evolution, crystal elasticity
and spatial orientation distribution on necking are discussed. Numerical results
based on the mesoscopic approach are compared with experimental data.
(Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)

1. Introduction
The concept of the forming limit diagram (FLD) has proved to be very useful for representing
conditions for the onset of sheet necking (see, e.g. Hecker (1975)), and is now a standard
tool for characterizing materials in terms of their overall forming behaviour. However,
experimentally measuring the FLD is a very time consuming procedure. Furthermore, the
scatter in experimental data for a given sheet is usually so large that researchers often question
the accuracy and precision with which the FLD is determined (see, e.g. Janssens et al (2001)).
As a result, a significant effort has been spent on developing more accurate and reliable
numerical procedures to construct FLDs, while experimental procedures for measuring FLDs
constantly improves.
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2004 IOP Publishing Ltd

Printed in the UK

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Most theoretical and numerical studies on FLD analysis have been based on the so-called
MK approach developed by Marciniak and Kuczynski (1967). The basic assumption of this
approach is the existence of a material imperfection, in the form of a groove, on the surface of the
sheet. They showed that a slight intrinsic inhomogeneity in load bearing capacity throughout
a deforming sheet can lead to unstable growth of strain in the region of the imperfection, and
subsequently cause localized necking and failure. Within the MK framework, the influence
of various constitutive features on FLDs has been explored using phenomenological plasticity
models (see, e.g. Neale and Chater (1980), Wu et al (2003a)) and crystal plasticity (see, e.g. Wu
et al (1997)). Using the MK approach, the predicted FLDs based on crystal plasticity were
in good agreement with measured FLDs for rolled aluminium alloy sheets (Wu et al 1998).
However, the MK approach needs the value of an artificial initial imperfection parameter f0 ,
which cannot be directly measured by physical experiments. Instead, the value of f0 has to be
estimated by fitting the FLD prediction of a strain path (often the in-plane plane strain tension)
to the corresponding experimental limit strain. Therefore, in order to calculate the FLD a
measured necking point is required, in addition to a measured initial texture and a stress
strain curve for characterizing hardening behaviour. As mentioned previously, measuring
FLDs is a very time consuming procedure that is not very reliable. Making things even
worse is the fact that a significant number of universities and companies have no capability
of measuring FLDs. The challenge then arises: knowing the initial state and a stressstrain
curve up to large strains of a sheet, is it possible to determine the limit strains/FLD for the
sheet?
The purpose of this paper is to develop a mesoscopic approach for predicting FLDs. The
approach is based on the concept of a unit cell. The unit cell is macroscopically infinitely
small and thus represents a material point in the sheet, but it is microscopically finitely large
and thus contains a sufficiently large number of grains. The response of the unit cell under
biaxial tension is calculated using the finite element method. Each element of a mesh/unit
cell represents a grain and the constitutive response at an integration point is described by the
single crystal plasticity theory. The initiation of localized necking is defined as the instant
when the unit cell goes to an in-plane plane strain state, i.e. the minor strain reaches its
maximum and the applied major strain is almost completely compromised by accelerating the
reduction of sheet thickness. The corresponding in-plane strain of the unit cell is the limit strain,
which produces a point on the FLD. The entire FLD of the sheet is determined by repeating
the procedure for different deformation paths. It is demonstrated that the limit strains are the
natural outcomes of the mesoscopic approach, and the artificial initial imperfection necessitated
by the macroscopic MK approach is not relevant in the mesoscopic approach. The effects
of strain-rate sensitivity, single slip hardening and latent hardening, texture evolution, crystal
elasticity and spatial orientation distribution on the FLD are discussed. Numerical results
based on the mesoscopic approach are compared with the experimental data.
2. Constitutive equations
In this section, we very briefly recapitulate the constitutive framework adopted in this paper.
For details we refer to Asaro and Needleman (1985) and Wu et al (1996). In the rate-dependent
crystal plasticity model employed, the elastic constitutive equation for each grain is specified by

= LD 0 tr D,

(1)

where denotes the Jaumann rate of the Cauchy stress tensor, L is the tensor of elastic moduli,
D represents the strain-rate tensor, and 0 accounts for the viscoplastic type stress rate that is

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Figure 1. Schematic representation of a unit cell under a remote biaxial stress state.

determined by the slip rates on the various slip systems in the crystal. The slip rates are taken
to be governed by the power-law expression





()
1/m


() = (0) sgn ()


(2)
g()

where (0) is a reference shear rate taken to be the same for all slip systems, () is the resolved
shear stress on slip system , and m is the strain-rate sensitivity. g() characterize the current
strain-hardened state of all slip systems. For multiple slip, the evolution of the hardening is
governed by

g () =
h() |() |
(3)

where g() (0) is the initial hardness, taken to be a constant 0 for each slip system, and h()
are the hardening moduli. The form of these moduli is
h() = q() h()

(no sum on )

(4)

where h() is a single slip hardening rate and q() is the matrix describing the latent hardening
behaviour of the crystallite. The latter is determined by a latent hardening parameter q
1;
if q = 1, hardening is isotropic.
The single slip hardening law employed in this paper takes the following power-law form
of the constitutive function h() :

n1
h0 a
h() = h0
(5)
+1
0 n
where h0 is the systems initial hardening rate, n is the hardening exponent and a is the
accumulated slip.
3. Problem formulation and method of solution
We define a unit cell as a small region of sheet under a remote biaxial stress state: 33 = 0
and 22 = 11 , as illustrated in figure 1. The unit cell is defined as a globally small region
of the sheet that contains all the essential micro-structural and textural features that characterize

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P D Wu et al

the sheet. Orientations in the measured texture data are randomly assigned to elements in the
mesh/unit cell. In other words, each element of the mesh represents an orientation from
the measured texture. The overall response of the unit cell is described by macroscopic strains
Eij and stresses ij , which are obtained by averaging their respective values of stresses ij(I )
over the total number of integration points N :
1  (I )
ij =
,
(6)
N I ij
where the grain stresses ij(I ) are computed according to the single crystal plasticity model
presented in section 2.
The loading is assumed to be strain controlled by prescribing the strain rate E 11 . The
transverse strain rate E 22 is determined at each instant such that the stress ratio 22 /11 =
is kept at a constant value during the deformation process (see figure 1). Uniaxial tension
along the RD corresponds to = 0; while = 0.5 describes a nearly in-plane plane strain
tension in the RD, = 1 gives a balanced biaxial tension. The initiation of localized necking
is defined as the instant when the unit cell goes to an in-plane plane strain state, i.e. the minor
strain reaches its maximum and the applied major strain is almost completely compromised
by accelerating reduction of sheet thickness. The corresponding in-plane biaxial strain state of
the unit cell represents the limit strains, which produces a point on the FLD. The entire FLD of
the sheet is determined by repeating the procedure for different deformation paths prescribed
by the stress ratio .
When the major straining direction is in the TD (such as uniaxial tension along the
transverse direction), it is more convenient numerically to control the deformation by
prescribing the strain rate E 22 . In this case, the vertical strain rate E 11 is calculated at each
instant such that the stress ratio 11 /22 = is kept at a constant value during the deformation
process.
The finite element scheme used in this paper is similar to that described by Wu and Van der
Giessen (1994), and used recently by Wu et al (2001, 2003b). We use quadrilateral elements,
each built up of four linear velocity, triangular sub-elements arranged in a crossed triangle
configuration. An equilibrium correction procedure is employed to avoid drift away from the
true equilibrium path during the incremental procedure.
4. Results
The initial sheet had the texture shown in figure 2 in terms of the {111} pole figure with
500 grains/orientations, and the rolling direction is aligned with the major stress direction (x1 ).
The mesoscopic approach developed in this paper determines the limit strains for sheet
metals with a homogeneous spatial distribution of grain orientations. In other words, the
sheet has a randomly distributed texture. However, when measured orientations are assigned
to elements in a mesh, an inevitable inhomogeneous spatial orientation distribution will be
introduced numerically. To reduce the effect of spatial distribution of texture components in
numerical simulations, we use a regular mesh consisting of 50 50 elements (50 elements
in the RD and 50 elements in the TD). The measured 500 crystal orientations are randomly
assigned five times to elements in the mesh. The global textures used in this case is exactly
the same as the experimental texture shown in figure 2.
The values for the material parameters in the crystal plasticity analysis are C11 = 236 GPa,
C12 = 135 GPa and C44 = 62 GPa, 0 = 0.001 s1 , m = 0.01, 0 = 48 MPa, h0 /0 = 28,
n = 0.285 and q = 1.0.

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Figure 2. Initial texture represented in terms of the {111} pole figure.

Figure 3. Calculated uniaxial stressstrain curve for the unit cell with the initial texture shown in
figure 2.

These values are in the range of those for rolled aluminium sheets, and will be used in all
simulations reported in this paper except where noted otherwise. The predicted stressstrain
curve under uniaxial tension in the RD is shown in figure 3. It is found from figure 3 that the
simulated stress reaches its maximum at a strain of about 0.24 and then gradually decreases
with further straining. The calculated strain path is presented in figure 4. It is observed that at
relatively small strains up to the maximum stress point there is a linear relationship between
the minor strain E22 and the applied major strain E11 . At large strains, |E22 | increases more
slowly until it reaches its saturation value 0.12 at E11 = 0.34. It is clear that the unit cell
(or the representative small region of the sheet) enters an in-plane plane strain tension state at
(0.34, 0.12). Therefore, E11 = 0.34 and E22 = 0.12 can be defined, respectively, as the
major and minor limit strains under uniaxial tension. Figure 5 shows contour plots of the von
Mises type effective plastic strain at different stages of the deformation. It is observed that the
deformation within the unit cell is quite inhomogeneous and the inhomogeneity starts when

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P D Wu et al

Figure 4. Calculated in-plane strain path for the unit cell under uniaxial tension.

Figure 5. Predicted distribution of the effective plastic strain for the unit cell of figure 3 at different
values of strain E11 .

the applied deformation is small. The inhomogeneous deformation gradually evolves with
increasing applied strain and forms a few localized deformation bands at around the maximum
stress. At necking, localized deformation bands have crossed the entire width of the unit cell.
As a result, the unit cell ceases to deform in the minor stress direction (x2 ) and material within
the unit cell is, on the average, under in-plane plane strain state.
The entire FLD of the sheet is determined by repeating the procedure for different
deformation paths as prescribed by the stress ratio : from uniaxial tension = 0, through a
nearly in-plane plane strain tension with = 0.5, to equi-biaxial tension for = 1. Figure 6

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Figure 6. Predicted FLD for a sheet with the initial texture shown in figure 2.

Figure 7. Influence of the strain-rate sensitivity m on the predicted FLDs.

presents the predicted FLD. Also included in figure 6 are strain paths under a few important
stress ratios. It is noted that the necking point for the strain path associated with = 1 is on
the left-hand side of the necking point for strain path for = 0.95 in the predicted FLD. This
is due to the anisotropy of the material. Previous studies have indicated that FLDs are usually
sensitive to effects of material properties such as strain hardening and material rate sensitivity
(e.g. Hutchinson and Neale (1978), Wu et al (1997)).
Figure 7 shows the change in the predicted FLD when the value of the material rate
sensitivity m is decreased by a factor of 10 to m = 0.001. Decreasing the rate sensitivity tends
to degrade the hardening at large strains. Consistent with this, figure 7 shows that the limit
strain is decreased relative to that in figure 6. The effect of m on FLDs predicted by the proposed
mesoscopic approach is similar to that based on the MK approach in conjunction with
phenomenological plasticity (Neale and Chater 1980) and crystal plasticity (Wu et al 1997).

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Figure 8. Influence of the hardening parameter n on the predicted FLDs.

Figure 9. Influence of the latent hardening parameter q on the predicted FLDs.

In this paper, the strain hardening is described by the power-law expression in terms of
the parameters n, q and h0 . It is known that the effect of parameter h0 on material response
is noticeable only when the applied strains are very small, and has no significant influence
on FLDs. In figure 8, the effect of hardening is first considered using the same value of q
(q = 1.0) but different values of n, n = 0.285 and 0.245. It is clear that a larger value of n
increases the limit strain, which can be attributed simply to the fact that hardening increases
with increasing n. The effect of the hardening characteristics by using the same value of n
(n = 0.285) but different values of q, q = 1.0 and 1.4 are shown in figure 9. It is apparent
that the latent hardening (q > 1.0) has no significant effect on FLDs: it only slightly increases
limit strains near the in-plane plane strain tension ( 0.5).

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Figure 10. Influence of crystal elastic properties on the predicted FLDs.

Previous works based on phenomenological plasticity models suggested that the predicted
FLDs are not sensitive to elastic properties of the materials. Consequently, elasticity has been
neglected in most FLD analyses; for instance, in Graf and Hosford (1990) and Zhou and
Neale (1995). However, Wu et al (1997) have revealed, according to their work on the crystal
plasticity based MK approach, that crystal elasticity has an important effect on the FLD. To
examine the effect of crystal elasticity on the FLD based on the mesoscopic approach, we



consider a rigid-plastic material with very large elastic constants C11
, C12
and C44
, which
are all a factor 100 larger than the corresponding values of C11 , C12 and C44 , but with all
other parameters, such as hardening parameters, kept unchanged. The term rigid plastic
is used here because the stressstrain curve of this material is almost identical to that of the
corresponding idea of rigid-plastic material. The predicted FLDs are presented in figure 10. It
is found that increasing the elastic modulus of a sheet metal can improve its formability. This
observation is similar to that from the crystal plasticity based MK approach.
It is generally accepted that texture evolution has a significant effect on the initiation and
propagation of shear bands in FCC polycrystalline metals (see, e.g. Wu et al (2001) and Inal
et al (2002)). In this paper, repeating calculations reported in figure 6 but turning off the
texture evolution assesses the influence of the texture evolution on FLDs. Numerical results
are presented in figure 11, and it is observed that texture evolution has a negligible effect on
limit strains for stress paths 0.0   0.3. However, texture evolution increases the limit
strains significantly when 0.4   1.0.
The results shown previously are based on a mesh with 50 50 elements or 5 500
orientations, and the same spatial orientation distribution: 500 measured crystal orientations
are randomly assigned five times to elements in the mesh. These 5 500 orientations are now
re-assigned randomly into elements in the mesh to have an additional three different spatial
orientation distributions without changing the measured texture. Results based on all four
spatial orientation distributions are presented in figures 12 and 13 for uniaxial tension and
figure 14 for the FLD. (The spatial orientation distribution with symbol C is the same as used
in figures 310.) In all simulations the values of the material parameters are the same. It is
observed from figures 12 and 13 that the four distributions give virtually the same response
up to about E11 = 0.24, where B and C reach their maximum stress points. The in-plane

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P D Wu et al

Figure 11. Influence of the texture evolution on the predicted FLDs.

Figure 12. Calculated uniaxial stressstrain curves for the unit cell with four different spatial
orientation distributions of the texture shown in figure 2.

strain components (E11 , E22 ) at maximum stress and localized necking are
at max. stress
A: (0.293, 0.129)
B: (0.244, 0.108)
C: (0.238, 0.107)
D: (0.297, 0.129)

at necking
A: (0.323, 0.136)
B: (0.306, 0.123)
C: (0.337, 0.124)
D: (0.337, 0.139)

It is found that the predicted in-plane strain components at maximum stress are quite
different for the four different spatial orientation distributions with the same measured global
texture. However, it is also observed from figure 12 that for distributions B and C, in
which the maximum stress is reached early, the stress decreases slowly after the maximum

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521

Figure 13. Calculated in-plane strain paths for the unit cell with four different spatial orientation
distributions of the texture shown in figure 2.

Figure 14. Predicted FLDs for the unit cell with four different spatial orientation distributions of
the texture shown in figure 2.

stress point. However, for distributions A and D, in which the maximum stress is achieved
at relatively larger strains, the stresses decrease more dramatically. As a result, the predicted
limit strains under uniaxial tension for all four distributions are within the typical range of
experimental error. The predicted FLDs based on the different spatial orientation distributions
are shown in figure 14, and it is clearly seen that the predicted necking points form a relatively
narrow band, indicating a relatively small spatial orientation distribution effect. The deformed
meshes at necking for the four different spatial orientation distributions are presented for
uniaxial tension ( = 0), in-plane plane strain tension ( = 0.5) and balanced biaxial tension
( = 1) in figures 1517, respectively. As expected, the pattern of localized deformation
is sensitive to the spatial distribution of the measured orientations. However, it could be

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P D Wu et al

Figure 15. Deformed mesh at necking under uniaxial tension for the unit cell with four different
spatial orientation distributions of the texture shown in figure 2.

Figure 16. Deformed mesh at necking under in-plane plane strain tension for the unit cell with
four different spatial orientation distributions of the texture shown in figure 2.

Sheet metal formability

523

Figure 17. Deformed mesh at necking under balanced biaxial tension for the unit cell with four
different spatial orientation distributions of the texture shown in figure 2.

concluded statistically, from figures 15 to 17 and deformed meshes for other deformation
paths not shown in this paper, that at necking at least one main localized deformation band has
crossed the width of the unit cell. As a result, the unit cell ceases to deform in the minor strain
direction and materials within the unit cell are under in-plane plane strain.
At this stage, it is of interest to compare simulated and measured FLDs. As an example,
we consider a commercial aluminium sheet with the measured initial texture shown in figure 2.
The crystal elastic constants, the strain-rate sensitivity m and the slip system reference plastic
shearing rate 0 are taken as identical to the values used previously. We assume isotropic
hardening (q = 1.0) and estimate the hardening parameters in the crystal plasticity constitutive
model by curve-fitting numerical simulations of uniaxial tension in the RD to the corresponding
experimental data. From this procedure and based on the mesh with spatial orientation
distribution C, we find that 0 = 48 MPa, h0 /0 = 28 and n = 0.285, which are also
identical to the values used previously. Figure 18 shows that there is quite good agreement
between the simulated and experimental curves.
It is necessary to point out that the experimental curve is the averaged response of the
whole sample under macroscopic uniaxial tension, while the simulation is intended to model
the local material response of a small region represented by the unit cell. Only when the
deformation is homogeneous over the whole sample can such a simulation be considered as a
real curve-fitting. So the determined hardening parameters, together with the unit cell model,
can be used to describe the hardening behaviour of the sheet. Therefore, the ideal experiment
used for determining hardening parameters should be the one in which the deformation in the
gauge section remains essentially homogeneous and no macroscopic localized shear band is
detected at large to very large strains. On the other hand, in order to validate the predictive
capability of the proposed mesoscopic approach, the ideal experiment used for determining

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P D Wu et al

Figure 18. Tensile stress response in uniaxial tension for an aluminium sheet with its initial texture
given in figure 2.

Figure 19. Predicted and measured FLDs for the aluminium sheet of figure 18.

hardening parameters should not be the one that itself is a strain path included in the FLD. It
has been noted that a planar simple shear is quite different compared to any strain path from
the biaxial states 0   1. Furthermore, Gasperini et al (1996) have indicated that the
planar simple shear can be used to characterize the plastic behaviour of thin sheet metals at
large strains (see also Wu et al (2001)). Unfortunately, a shear test is not available for the sheet
considered. In this paper, therefore, the hardening parameters are calculated by curve-fitting
the numerical simulation of uniaxial tension in the RD to the corresponding experimental data.
Figure 19 shows the simulated and measured FLDs. It is seen that the agreement between
the simulated and measured FLDs is reasonable, with the simulation tending to underestimate
the limit strains for the stretch region of the diagram. For a comparison, the predicted FLD based
on the MK approach in conjunction with the Taylor polycrystal plasticity is also included in

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figure 19. It should be pointed out that in the MK analysis the value of the initial imperfection
parameter f0 was estimated by fitting the limit strain of in-plane plane strain tension (Wu et al
1998), while f0 was not relevant for the mesoscopic approach.
5. Discussion and conclusions
In this paper, a mesoscopic approach for predicting sheet metal formability has been developed.
The approach is based on the concept of the unit cell, which is macroscopically infinitely small
and thus represents a material point in the sheet, but is microscopically finitely large and thus
contains a large number of grains. The response of the unit cell under a range of stress paths
is calculated using the finite element method. Each element of a mesh/unit cell represents
an orientation and the constitutive response at an integration point is described by the single
crystal plasticity theory.
It is demonstrated that the limit strains are the natural outcomes of the mesoscopic
approach, and the artificial initial imperfection necessitated by the macroscopic MK approach
is not needed in the mesoscopic approach. The effects of strain-rate sensitivity, single slip
hardening and latent hardening, texture evolution, crystal elasticity and spatial orientation
distribution on the FLD have been discussed.
There are three major difficulties involved in the development and application of the
proposed mesoscopic approach to predict sheet metal formability.
The first is how to define the necking point for a given deformation path. In this paper, the
initiation of localized necking is defined as the instant when the unit cell goes to an in-plane
plane strain state, i.e. the minor strain reaches its maximum or saturation value, and the applied
major strain is almost completely compromised by accelerating reduction of sheet thickness.
The corresponding in-plane strain components of the unit cell are the limit strains, which
form a point on the FLD. The entire FLD of a sheet is determined by repeating the procedure
for different deformation paths as prescribed by the stress ratio . This definition appears
physically appropriate. However, it should be pointed out that this mesoscopic approach may
tend to overestimate the limit strains because the major or minor strain direction is constrained to
be only possible in either vertical or horizontal direction. A more conservative estimate of
the forming limit strain could be obtained by calculating the limit strain for various values of
the chosen angle by which the initial texture rotated around the sheet normal and selecting the
minimum limit strain as the forming limit strain. However, in reality, the simulation is in good
agreement with experiments in the drawn region of the FLD and underestimates the behaviour
in the stretch region, figure 19.
The second difficulty is how to reduce the numerical effect of spatial orientation
distribution of a measured texture. In our approach, Ng measured grain orientations are
randomly assigned Na times to Na Ng elements in the mesh. Our detailed numerical tests,
not shown in this paper, have indicated that the appropriate value of Na depends on the texture.
Usually, the stronger the texture, the smaller the value of Na . In general, we first fix a value of
Na based on personal experience on the texture. The resulting Na Ng orientations are then
assigned randomly into elements in the mesh to have different spatial orientation distributions
without changing the measured texture. The value of Na is considered large enough if the
predicted necking points based on the different distributions form a relatively narrow band.
Otherwise, the value of Na is increased until a relatively small spatial orientation distribution
effect is reached. For the texture with 500 grains shown in figure 2, the results presented in
figure 13 clearly demonstrated that Na = 5 was large enough to give relatively actuate results.
The third major difficulty involved in the proposed mesoscopic approach is related to how
to characterize the hardening behaviour of sheet at large strains. The ideal experiment used

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P D Wu et al

to determine hardening parameters should be the one in which the deformation in the gauge
section remains essentially homogeneous at large to very large strains, and at same time should
not be the one which itself is a strain path included in the FLD. While the uniaxial tension test
was used to estimate values of hardening parameters in this paper, we recommend using the
planar simple shear test.
However, with these essentials in mind, the differences between the predicted and
measured FLDs could be due to the fact that the simulation considered in-plane stretching,
while the experimental data was obtained from hemispherical punch stretching tests. In punch
tests there are compressive stresses normal to the sheet, frictional shear stresses, and sheet
curvature. Furthermore, the stress paths are not necessarily proportional. These complicating
factors have not been accounted for in our analyses. In addition, it has been found that the
measured FLDs from in-plane stretching lie below the corresponding punch stretching FLDs
(Ghosh and Hecker 1974). Based on this observation, the agreement between the calculated and
experimental FLDs can be considered to be reasonably good. Nevertheless, both theoretical
and experimental development are required to further validate and improve the mesoscopic
approach.
Finally, it should be emphasized that the mesoscopic approach, together with the numerical
scheme for reducing the spatial orientation distribution effect, is developed to estimate FLDs
for sheet metals with homogeneous/random spatial distribution of grain orientations. For a
sheet with an inhomogeneous distribution of differently oriented grains, plastic deformation
roughens a free surface by the development of roping due to the alignment of texture
components. For a roping sheet localized necking is often initiated at a valley, and it is
expected that the forming limit strain based on the proposed mesoscopic approach will be
sensitive to the texture distribution. Research on applying the proposed approach to predict
FLDs for roping sheets is in progress and will be reported elsewhere.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to Alcan International Limited for allowing the publication of this work.
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