The overall goal of the research is to improve the scientific basis for computer-integrated analysis of the deformation processing of materials. The research consists of four major thrusts: (1) physical and computational large deformation experiments will be conducted on polycrystalline metals in order to formulate phenomenological constitutive equations which capture the evolution, with increasing deformation, of mechanical anisotropy due to crystallographic texturing; (2) physical experiments will be conducted in order to formulate and evaluate improved state-variable type continuum representation of frictional and heat transfer characteristics at the tool/workpiece interface; (3) coupled thermo-mechanical finite element computational procedures will be developed which incorporate the enhanced workpiece and interface constitute equations; and (4) laboratory- scale deformation processing operations will be conducted, instrumented, and critically compared with numerical simulations in order to assess the predictive capabilities of the constitutive equations and computational procedures. The research represents a collaboration of investigators from academia, a materials company committed to computer-integrated simulation of deformation processing, and a developer of advanced solid mechanics software applications.
