In the present work, a powerful modeling tool is developed to predict and analyze the onset of strain localization in polycrystalline aggregates. The predictions of localized necking are based on two plastic instability criteria, namely the bifurcation theory and the initial imperfection approach. In this tool, a micromechanical model, based on the self-consistent scale-transition scheme, is used to accurately derive the mechanical behavior of polycrystalline aggregates from that of their microscopic constituents (the single crystals). The mechanical behavior of the single crystals is developed within a large strain rate-independent constitutive framework. This micromechanical constitutive modeling takes into account the essential microstructure-related features that are relevant at the microscale. These microstructural aspects include key physical mechanisms, such as initial and induced crystallographic textures, morphological anisotropy and interactions between the grains and their surrounding medium. The developed tool is used to predict sheet metal formability through the concept of forming limit diagrams (FLDs). The results obtained by the self-consistent averaging scheme, in terms of predicted FLDs, are compared with those given by the more classical full-constraint Taylor model. Moreover, the predictions obtained by the imperfection approach are systematically compared with those given by the bifurcation analysis, and it is demonstrated that the former tend to the latter in the limit of a vanishing size for the initial imperfection.
Finite element investigation of size effects on the mechanical behavior of nickel single crystals