On the correlation of meso-scale local texture and roping profile in AA6xxx sheet alloys

Roping as a heterogeneous plastic deformation is generally attributed to the occurrence of the meso-scale clustering of grains with similar orientations. Large-scale electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) orientation maps are customarily used to correlate the orientation topography with the roping profile. The most common way of investigating this phenomenon is to extract the predominant texture components and then to correlate them with the roping profile, since grains belong to different texture components lead to different plastic responses. Instead of using a microscopic representative volume element in the length scale of the grain size, the present work proposes a moving window mechanical model to use a representative volume element of the meso-scale, corresponding to a grain cluster, to simulate roping. For a tensile test in the transverse direction, a quantitative prediction of surface roping profile can be obtained. For an artificial EBSD orientation map, the proposed model can yield both roping wavelength and amplitude.status: publishe