Correlation Between Elastic and Plastic Anisotropy in Rolled Metal Plates

Because of its relative strength and ability to be formed into various shapes, sheet metal is one of the most widely used industrial materials. Forming processes can be classified into several categories including bending, stretching and drawing. To insure high quality in the final product and/or efficiency in processing, material properties should be consistent and optimized according to the different forming processes which involve different strain distributions. These material properties are controlled in the mill by adjustments in chemical composition and thermomechanical processing, resulting in certain desirable textures and microstructures. For deep drawing applications (e.g. Ail beverage cans and stainless steel kitchen sinks) texture or preferred crystallographic orientation has a strong influence on the resistance of the material to thinning during a draw and therefore on the maximum attainable depth of draw. It also determines the presence or absence of earing, i.e. nonuniformity in the depth, which can occur, for instance, when drawing a cup (see e.g. fig. 1). Although textures can be characterized by X-ray pole figures, for engineering purposes the most relevant material parameters are obtained from uniaxial tensile measurements.