Issues in Modeling Heterogeneous Deformations in Polycrystalline Metals using Multiscale Approaches

Computational mechanics provides a powerful environment for modeling the evolution of material structure during deformation processes and for associating that evolution with changes to the mechanical properties. In this paper, we illustrate a two-scale formulation that links the mechanical loading applied at the scale of a component (the continuum scale) to the responses of the material at the scale of the crystals that comprise it (the crystal scale). Employing the capabilities offered by computational mechanics, we can better understand how heterogeneity of deformation arising at both the continuum and crystal scales influences the behaviors observed experimentally. Such an understanding is central to improving the performance of engineering alloys.