A Mechanism of Determining the Formability of AZ31 near Room Temperature

In our previous studies, it was shown that the basal slip and extension twinning were the primary deformation modes of AZ31 alloy at room temperature. It was postulated that the maximum amount of cold reduction that a specimen with a given initial texture could undergo coincides with the exhaustion of twin deformation. In this paper, the formability of AZ31 with different initial textures is simulated under both uniaxial compression and tension. The textures considered are all fiber type with their fiber axes covering all possible crystallographic directions in the orientation space in 5 degrees angular intervals. The basal fiber texture exhibits the worst formability, random texture exhibits improved formability, and (10-11) fiber texture exhibits the best formability. The simulation results are presented in the inverse pole figure space and they clearly demonstrate the relationship between the formability and the initial texture. This study ultimately generates a map of formability of AZ31 as a function of initial texture.