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Modeling the effect of twinning and detwinning during

strain-path changes of magnesium alloy AZ31
Gwnalle Proust
a,b,
*
, Carlos N. Tom
a
, Ashutosh Jain
c
, Sean R. Agnew
c
a
Los Alamos National Laboratory, MST-8, MS G755, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
b
University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
c
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Virginia, 116 Engineering Way, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 11 December 2007
Received in nal revised form 17 May 2008
Available online 14 June 2008
Keywords:
Twinning
Polycrystal modeling
Hardening
Hexagonal materials
Magnesium
a b s t r a c t
Hexagonal materials deform plastically by activating diverse slip
and twinning modes. The activation of such modes depends on
their relative critical stresses, and the orientation of the crystals
with respect to the loading direction. To be reliable, a constitutive
description of these materials has to account for texture evolution
associated with reorientations due to both dislocation slip and
twinning, and for the effect of the twin boundaries as barriers to
dislocation propagation. We extend a previously introduced twin
model, which accounts explicitly for the composite character of
the grain formed by a matrix with embedded twin lamellae, to
describe the inuence of twinning on the mechanical behavior of
the material. The role of the twins as barriers to dislocations is
explicitly incorporated into the hardening description of slip defor-
mation via a directional HallPetch mechanism. We introduce here
an improved hardening law for twinning, which discriminates for
specic twin/dislocation interactions, and a detwinning mecha-
nism. We apply this model to the interpretation of compression
and tension experiments done in rolled magnesium alloy AZ31B
at room temperature. Particularly challenging cases involve
strain-path changes that force strong interactions between twin-
ning, detwinning, and slip mechanisms.
2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
0749-6419/$ - see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijplas.2008.05.005
* Corresponding author. Address: University of Sydney, School of Civil Engineering, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. Tel.: +61 2
9036 5498; fax: +61 2 9351 3343.
E-mail address: G.Proust@usyd.edu.au (G. Proust).
International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
International Journal of Plasticity
j ournal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ i j pl as
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1. Introduction
The purpose of the present work is twofold: develop a crystallographic model for the plastic re-
sponse of Mg AZ31, applicable to non-monotonic deformation conditions and, in the process, increase
our basic understanding of the role that slip and twin modes play in texture and hardening evolution.
Wrought magnesium and magnesium alloys show, especially at room temperature, high asymme-
try and anisotropy in their mechanical properties as a result of texture, the polar nature of twinning,
and the fact that different deformation modes are active depending on the loading direction (Kelley
and Hosford, 1968; Avedesian and Baker, 1999; Jain and Agnew, 2007; Lou et al., 2007). Several studies
have been realized to understand the occurrence of the various slip and twin modes and their role
onto the hardening behavior and texture evolution of Mg and Mg alloys during monotonic deforma-
tion (see for example Klimanek and Potzsch, 2002; Agnew et al., 2003; Agnew and Duygulu, 2005;
Jiang et al., 2007). From these studies, it is clear that Mg and its alloys possess two easy deformation
modes: hai slip on basal planes and tensile f10

12gh

1011i twinning. In particular, tensile twinning has

been associated with the increased hardening of the material that is observed when deformation takes
place along the main basal component (Kelley and Hosford, 1968; Barnett, 2007a). These two modes
alone, however, are insufcient to accommodate arbitrary deformation, and it has been found exper-
imentally that other slip modes contribute to strain accommodation: pyramidal hai slip f10

11gh11

20i
(e.g., Schmid and Boas, 1968), prism hai slip f10

10gh11

20i (e.g., Ward-Flynn et al., 1961) and pyrami-

dal hc + ai slip f11

22gh11

23i (Stohr and Poirier, 1972; Obara et al., 1973; Ando and Tonda, 2000).
The relative activity of the various slip and twinning modes described above depends on the spe-
cic loading conditions and initial texture; in turn, it determines texture evolution. In addition, hard-
ening depends, in a complex manner, on the texture and interactions between slip and twin modes.
Central to this effect is the fact that tensile twins change the texture of the material by reorienting
domains of the grain by 86.6. Moreover, twin boundaries can also act as obstacles to further slip
and twinning deformation (Christian and Mahajan, 1995; Serra and Bacon, 1995; Serra et al., 2002).
As a consequence, not only the monotonic loading response varies much depending on texture and
testing direction and sense, but the mechanical response associated with strain-path changes (such
as the ones which take place during forming) cannot be deduced from the knowledge of the mono-
tonic response. This strain-path change behavior has been characterized experimentally for AZ31
Mg by Jain and Agnew (2006) and Lou et al. (2007). These authors observe that in sheet pre-deformed
mainly by slip, twinning is not prevented by the presence of dislocations in the material, but the
reloading yield strengths are slightly higher than for the annealed material. The inuence of twins
introduced by pre-straining on the reloading behavior of several magnesium alloys has also been ex-
plored (Caceres et al., 2003; Kleiner and Uggowitzer, 2004; Jain and Agnew, 2006; Brown et al., 2007;
Lou et al., 2007; Mann et al., 2007; Wang and Huang, 2007). These authors report the phenomenon of
detwinning (also referred to as untwinning) upon reversal or strain-path changes: the twins created
during preload disappear during reload, and texture evolution is reversed to a large extent.
The objective of this paper is to predict the mechanical behavior at room temperature of the Mg
alloy AZ31B during strain-path changes. Recently, we published a similar analysis for pure Zr de-
formed at 76 K, a regime where tensile and compressive twins are active, and where secondary twin-
ning plays an important role in increasing ductility (Proust et al., 2007). In that paper, where we
present our new composite grain (CG) twin model, we argue that only a crystallography-based model
that accounts for the orientation of slip and twin systems in each grain can describe the mechanical
response for arbitrary deformation routes. Mg differs from Zr in that it twins more easily after only
2% strain, Mg alloys can already exhibit as much as 14% twinned volume fraction (Chino et al., 2008)
and that it has been observe to undergo prolic detwinning. Therefore, it was necessary to extend the
previously described CG twin model to properly describe these unique twinning behaviors associated
with Mg alloys.
In our previous paper (Proust et al., 2007), we provided a comprehensive review of polycrystal
models addressing twinning in HCP materials. In short, early models were only concerned with
describing texture evolution associated with monotonic loading (Van Houtte, 1978; Tom et al.,
1991; Lebensohn and Tom, 1993; Philippe et al., 1995). More recently, researchers started developing
862 G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880
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constitutive models that, in addition to texture, also addressed the hardening response due to twin-
ning associated with monotonic loading (Agnew et al., 2001; Kalidindi, 2001; Kaschner et al., 2001;
Tom et al., 2001; Salem et al., 2003, 2005; Staroselsky and Anand, 2003; Barnett et al., 2006; Clausen
et al., 2008; Wu et al., 2007). Most of these approaches accounted for twin reorientation and used the
concept of latent hardening to capture the role that twin interfaces play in hardening. It is also inter-
esting to notice that models for martensitic transformation in TRIP steels share many commonalities
with the crystallography-based twin models described above (Cherkaoui et al., 1998; Cherkaoui, 2003;
Kubler et al., 2003) and have been adapted (Cherkaoui, 2003) for modeling twinning in fcc materials.
The models described above reasonably predict the stressstrain response and texture evolution of
magnesium alloys during monotonic deformation but predicting the mechanical behavior of these
materials is more challenging once one considers changes in the loading path. To the best of our
knowledge, only one attempt has been made to model the strain-path change behavior of Mg alloys.
Jain and Agnew (2006) used the VPSC model (Lebensohn and Tom, 1993) combined with the predom-
inant twin reorientation (PTR) scheme (Tom et al., 1991) and tted the hardening parameters to
monotonic deformation data. Although this particular model allows for latent hardening between
the various deformation modes, it ignores the hardening directionality due to the microstructure evo-
lution during twinning. The predictions for the strain-path changes did not match the experimental
results, which demonstrated the need for a new model.
This paper describes the use and extension of the CG twin model to predict the hardening, texture
and twin volume fraction evolution of rolled Mg alloy AZ31B during monotonic and strain-path
change deformations at room temperature. Although the focus is on modeling issues, we also interpret
the experimental data to understand how the various deformation modes interact during strain-path
change. We have also made a rst attempt at modeling detwinning and our simple initial approach
captures the main features associated with that process.
2. Experimental results
2.1. Material
Commercial magnesium alloy AZ31B (3 wt% Al, 1 wt% Zn and balance Mg) sheet material was re-
ceived in the stress relieved H24-temper. The material was annealed for an hour at 345 C to reduce
the presence of mechanical twins. After the heat treatment the microstructure of the material was an
equiaxed grain structure with an average grain size of 13 lm. The initial texture was measured by X-
ray diffraction (XRD) and is shown in Fig. 1a. Compression and tension tests were performed at room
temperature with an initial strain rate of 5 10
3
s
1
using a computer controlled MTS screw-driven
machine. The nal texture of each deformed sample was then measured by electron backscattered dif-
fraction (EBSD). Detailed experimental procedures were published previously (Jain and Agnew, 2006).
2.2. Monotonic deformation
Fig. 1b shows the stressstrain response of the alloy deformed monotonically by in-plane tension
(IPT), in-plane compression (IPC) and through-thickness compression (TTC). The respective nal tex-
tures are shown in Fig. 2. As the initial texture is not axisymmetric about the sheet normal direction,
some anisotropy was observed for tests along different in-plane directions (Jain and Agnew, 2007);
however, the in-plane results reported in the present paper are solely obtained for a load applied par-
allel to the rolling direction (RD) of the plate. The IPT and TTC samples exhibit the typical hardening
behavior associated with slip dominated deformation. During TTC, the material deforms mainly via
basal hai and pyramidal hc + ai slip; the latter mechanism was rst observed in Mg during c-axis com-
pression of single crystals (Obara et al., 1973). However, recent studies (Koike, 2005; Jiang et al., 2006;
Barnett, 2007b) have shown that f10

11g compressive twinning, f10

11gf10

12g double twining and

f10

13gf10

12g double twinning, can also accommodate compressive strains along the c-axis at room
temperature. However, those twinning systems never grow to reach the size or volume fraction of the
f10

12g tensile twins (Jiang et al., 2007) and, therefore, do not contribute to the same extent as the
G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880 863
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tensile twinning to shear accommodation. As noted by Jain et al. (2008) these twins cause reorienta-
tions within the main texture components and do not result in marked texture evolution. Hence, those
systems will not be considered in the present simulations, rather it will be assumed that the required
shear accommodated by these twins is reasonably approximated by hc + ai slip (Agnew et al., 2006).
Before deformation, the material shows a strong basal texture with most of the grains having their
c-axes within 40 from the TT direction. After 5% TTC, the basal component of the texture has been
reinforced and now most grains have their c-axes within 30 from the TT direction. The spread in
the c-axis distribution has been reduced, as can be seen on the texture prole shown in Fig. 3. To ob-
tain the proles from the experimental the XRD and EBDS texture data, we enforce axisymmetry on
the pole gure by averaging the intensity along the azimuthal direction between 0 and 360.
During IPT, basal hai and prismatic hai slip accommodate most of the deformation (Barnett et al.,
2006; Jain et al., 2008). But due to the c-axis spread of the initial texture, some grains are favorably
oriented for tensile twinning (Jain et al., 2008). In the basal pole gure obtained for the sample de-
formed 10% in IPT (see Fig. 2), the presence of (0002) intensity in the direction perpendicular to both
the rolling and TT directions conrms the existence of twins in the material. Integrating the area under
the basal pole intensity curve of Fig. 3, gives an estimated 7% volume fraction of twins after 10%
deformation.
The hardening displayed by the sample deformed in IPC shows the characteristic increase in the
hardening rate associated with twinning. The microstructure of the material has been changed dras-
tically, as can be seen in Fig. 4a, showing a micrograph of a sample deformed 7% in IPC. Most of the
grains present twin lamellae and some of them are heavily twinned. The texture of the deformed
material is also very different from the initial one (see Fig. 2). The basal component along the ND
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20
0
100
200
300
400
IPT
TTC
IPC
S
t
r
e
s
s

(
M
P
a
)
Strain
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20
0
100
200
300
400
Strain-path change
Monotonic
S
t
r
e
s
s

(
M
P
a
)
Strain
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20
0
100
200
300
400
S
t
r
e
s
s

(
M
P
a
)
Strain
IPC
Reloads
TTC
Reloads
0002
0 1 10
1.0
2.0
4.0
8.0
TD
RD RD
TD
Fig. 1. (a) Basal and prismatic pole gure showing the texture of the as-annealed AZ31B Mg; (b) stressstrain curves for
monotonic IPT, IPC and TTC; (c) strain-path change stressstrain curves for the samples deformed rst in TTC to 5% and 10%
strain and then deformed in IPC (the monotonic IPC stressstrain curve is represented by the dotted line for comparison); and
(d) strain-path change stressstrain curves for the samples deformed rst in IPC to 5% and 10% strain and then deformed in TTC
(the monotonic TTC stressstrain curve is represented by the dotted line for comparison).
864 G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880
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has disappeared and now the c-axes of the crystals are aligned with the loading direction due to the
86.6 reorientation caused by tensile twinning. A comparison of the texture proles obtained for the
as-annealed material and the sample deformed in IPC, allows us to identify that there is a separation
between the c-axis orientations belonging to the matrix or to the twinned portion of the material at a
tilt angle of about 50. Integrating the intensity proles between 50 and 90, and subtracting the ini-
tial volume fraction in the same interval, allows us to evaluate the twin volume fractions in deformed
samples. Results are reported in Table 1, where it can be seen that after 10% IPC, 90% of the aggregate
has twinned.
2.3. Effect of prior slip on subsequent twinning
In order to study the effect of dislocation substructure on subsequent deformation dominated by
twinning, samples were pre-strained in TTC up to strains of 5% and 10%, and then reloaded in IPC.
The stressstrain curves corresponding to these experiments are shown in Fig. 1c. The nal texture
corresponding to the sample deformed 5% in TTC and then 5% in IPC is shown in Fig. 2. During TTC
pre-straining, the material deforms primarily by basal hai and pyramidal hc + ai slip, though there is
likely some f10

11g compressive twinning as noted by Jiang et al. (2006).

Measured Predicted
0001
0 1 10
0.4
1.0
2.0
4.0
8.0
0001
0 1 10
RD
TD
5%
TTC
10%
IPT
10%
IPC
5% TTC
+ 5% IPC
5%IPC+
10%TTC
Fig. 2. Comparison of measured and predicted basal and prismatic pole gures for monotonic and strain-path change
deformations. The measured pole gures were obtained by EBSD. IPC and IPT were realized along the RD. The 0.4 intensity line
is included in the 10% IPT case to reveal the anomalous twinning effect.
G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880 865
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The IPC reload curve following 5% and 10% TTC pre-load is similar to the monotonic IPC curve: the
deformation is still largely accommodated by twinning, as the hardening and texture evolution show,
but the onset of twinning happens at a higher stress. The value of the reload yield strength has in-
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
0.0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.0
0.1
0.2
0.3
Predicted
N
o
r
m
a
i
l
i
z
e
d

I
n
t
e
n
s
i
t
y

Measured
N
o
r
m
a
l
i
z
e
d

i
n
t
e
n
s
i
t
y

Initial

5% TTC 10% IPT 10% IPC

5% TTC+5% IPC 5% IPC +10% TTC
angle angle
Fig. 3. Comparison of the measured and predicted texture proles used to estimate the twin volume fractions in the samples
deformed by IPC (monotonic or strain-path change) and by IPT. The angle represents the orientation of the c-axis of the various
crystals in reference to the normal direction of the plate. The solid black line represents the texture prole of the as-annealed
material and is used as the base line in the twin volume fraction calculations.
Fig. 4. Micrographs showing the microstructure of (a) a sample deformed by in-plane compression to a strain of 7% and (b) a
sample rst deformed by in-plane compression to a strain of 7% and then by through-thickness compression to a strain of 6%.
Table 1
Estimation of the twin volume fraction using the measured and predicted texture proles shown in Fig. 3
Twin volume fraction
Experimental Prediction
10% IPT 0.07 0.08
10% IPC 0.90 0.86
5 IPC + 10% TTC 0 0
5% TTC + 5% IPC 0.65 0.72
866 G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880
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creased by 40 and 60 MPa, respectively, and there is a Bauschinger-like transition within the rst 2%
deformation. In addition, both reload curves show a more extended transition from easy to hard defor-
mation, probably as a result of a more balanced twin and slip activity, which also leads to a slower
texture evolution. Lou et al. (2007) proposed that dislocation multiplication affects the twin nucle-
ation stress. In this case, during the preloading, hai and hc + ai dislocations are introduced. These dis-
locations may act as barriers to twin nucleation or/and twin propagation. This would explain both the
increase of the stress corresponding to the onset of twinning with the increase in pre-strain, as well as
the more extended hardening plateau associated with twinning.
2.4. Detwinning
In order to study the effect of twinning on subsequent deformation, samples were pre-strained in
IPC up to strains of 5% and 10%, and then reloaded in TTC. The stressstrain curves corresponding to
these experiments are shown in Fig. 1d, and the texture corresponding to 5% IPC followed by 10% TTC
is shown in Fig. 2. During pre-straining, the material deforms primarily by tensile twinning, but re-
verses the twins (detwins) during the reload stage. The integration of the texture proles is consistent
with this understanding; Table 1 indicates that the material is twin free after 10% TTC reload.
During monotonic TTC, primarily basal hai and pyramidal hc + ai slip are active; however, once
twins have been introduced by previous IPC, the hardening behavior of the material reloaded in
TTC changes drastically. The reload ow curves display the sigmoidal shape associated to deformation
twinning. The reason is that the grains that have twinned during IPC are nowproperly oriented to twin
again (or detwin) during subsequent TTC since the basal poles are roughly at 90 from the TT direction.
The reversal of the texture (see Fig. 2) associated with TTC reloads is a strong indication of detwinning.
To prove that detwinning is actually happening during this strain-path change, micrographs of the
microstructure were taken after 7% IPC (Fig. 4a) and after 7% IPC followed by 6% TTC (Fig. 4b). By com-
paring Fig. 4a and b, we see that the amount of twins has decreased during TTC reload and though
some twin lamellae are still visible in Fig. 4b, there are many grains that are twin free and very few
grains are heavily twinned. Detwinning may not be complete because the test was stopped before full
strain reversal (Wu et al., in press).
Both reloading curves in Fig. 1d are similar to the monotonic IPC stressstrain curve except for the
value of the reload yield strength. After 5% IPC pre-strain, the yield stress upon reloading is actually
lower than the initial yield for IPC indicating that detwinning is easier to activate than twinning, as
noted previously (Lou et al., 2007). As the amount of pre-straining increases, the yield strength in-
creases. This phenomenon could be explained by the fact that slip is activated inside and around
the newly created twins and, as the density of dislocations increases, detwinning becomes harder
to activate.
3. Polycrystal model
The Visco-Plastic Self Consistent (VPSC) polycrystal model is used as a platform for implementing a
mesoscopic Composite Grain (CG) model that accounts for twinning evolution inside the grain. The
reader can nd a detailed description of VPSC and of the recently proposed CG model in our recent
paper (Proust et al., 2007), where the model was applied to describe the response of Zr subjected to
strain-path changes. Within the VPSC approach, each grain is regarded as a visco-plastic inclusion
embedded in and interacting with the visco-plastic effective medium that represents the aggregate.
When the medium is subjected to externally imposed loading conditions, the relative stiffness of grain
and medium determine the deformation of the former. The strain rate is assumed to be uniform inside
the grain, and is accommodated by the shear rates provided by slip and twin systems. The strain rate
of the grain, _ e, is related to the shear rates
_
c
s
contributed by slip and twinning systems through a rate
sensitive law
_ e
ij

s
m
s
ij
_
c
s

_
c
0

s
m
s
ij
m
s
: r
s
s
_ _
n
M
sec
ijkl
r
kl
: 1
G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880 867
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where r is the stress tensor, and s
s
is the threshold resolved shear stress associated with the system s.
M
sec
is a linearized visco-plastic compliance tensor (secant approximation) that is accurate for a dis-
crete range of rates and stresses. Its evolution with deformation is a complex function of the slip and
twinning activity in the grain and is discussed below.
3.1. The composite grain twin model
The CG twin model was introduced to describe the strain-path change behavior of Zr at 76 K (Tom
and Kaschner, 2005; Proust et al., 2007). Differences in how twinning operates in Mg by comparison to
Zr, forced us to extend the model and revise some of the assumptions used in Proust et al. (2007). We
refer the interested reader to the two papers mentioned above, while here we focus on what is new
about the model.
Fig. 5 illustrates the characteristics of the CG model. During a deformation simulation, the Predom-
inant Twin System (PTS) is identied in each grain, and a layered structure of twins parallel to the twin
plane of the PTS is assumed to form and to evolve with twin activity. The interaction between this
composite grain and the surrounding effective medium is characterized by the CG effective mechan-
ical properties. The layers are assumed to be equidistant and two parameters are introduced: the sep-
aration d
c
of the center planes of the lamellae, and the maximumvolume fraction of the grain that may
be reoriented by twinning f
PTS
max
. Because twins are assumed (as a rst approximation) to pose impen-
etrable barriers to dislocations or to other twins, the separation of the twin interfaces is relevant to the
hardening response, as we will see below.
The rst adaptation we have introduced in the CG model to reproduce the behavior of Mg concerns
the spacing between the twin lamellae. For the Zr we assumed that the parameter d
c
was constant
throughout the entire deformation, which was in agreement with our experimental data showing that
by 30% deformation less than 50% of the material had twinned (Proust et al., 2007). In the case of Mg,
the experimental data shows that after 10% deformation almost 90% of the material has twinned, and
that twins coalesce inside the grain. Therefore, it does not seem appropriate to have twin boundaries
acting as barriers when almost the entire grain is transformed by twinning. For this reason, the value
of d
c
is made to increase with the PTS volume fraction until reaching a value of one (which corre-
sponds to having only one twin domain), when 70% of the grain has twinned.
By creating this layered twinmatrix structure inside grains, we are able to account for the direc-
tional barrier effect created by the twin boundaries. If slip is occurring, inside the matrix or inside the
twin, on a plane non-parallel to the twin/matrix interface, the dislocation mean free path is reduced
Fig. 5. Schematics of the CG showing the characteristic lengths used in the model and the evolution of these lengths with the
PTS volume fraction when the material twins and detwins. (a) The material has not started to twin and the grain is only
constituted of a matrix region, (b) when the material starts to twin, several thin lamellae are created, (c) as the PTS volume
fraction increases, some lamellae merge together increasing the mean free path (d
mfp
) for the dislocation motion inside the
twinned domains, and (d) the grain has almost completed twinned and we have now a single twinned region.
868 G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880
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due to the barrier effect and that particular slip system will be harder to activate. This idea is imple-
mented in the CG model through a HallPetch term that depends on the calculated mean free path for
each slip system in the matrix and in the twins.
The second change we have introduced in the extended CG twin model concerns the coupling be-
tween twin and matrix. In the previous paper presenting the CG model, we introduced two different
methods to calculate the deformation of matrix and twin: the coupled and uncoupled twin lamellae. In
the former case, continuity of stress and strain is enforced across the twin interface that separates
twin and matrix, once the PTS is identied in the grain and the twins are created. In the latter ap-
proach, twin and matrix representative ellipsoids are assumed to interact independently with the
effective medium, although the volume transfer between matrix and twin and the shape update
(due to the evolution of the twin volume fraction, the thickness of the matrix and twin lamellae is
changing) are still enforced. To predict the behavior of this Mg alloy we use the coupled deformation
scheme at the beginning of deformation, when twins can be regarded as thin lamellae (as in Fig. 4a).
When the twin volume fraction inside the grain is higher than 70% and twins coalesce, we transition to
the uncoupled scheme.
3.2. Hardening of slip systems
Within the CG model, three mechanisms may contribute to the hardening of slip systems inside the
matrix and the twin: the evolution of the statistical dislocations with strain, the evolution of geomet-
rically necessary dislocations (GND) and a directional HallPetch effect:
s
s
s
s
STAT
s
s
GND
s
s
HP
: 2
Each of these terms is updated incrementally at each straining step. The rst term is a classical satu-
ration Voce law associated with statistical dislocations, to which a latent hardening effect has been
added:
Ds
s
STAT

d
^
s
s
dC

s
0
h
ss
0
Dc
s
0
; 3a
where
^
s
s
s
0
s
1
1 exp
Ch
0
s
1
_ _ _ _
: 3b
Here C is accumulated shear in the grain, Dc
s
0
the shear increment in the slip or twinning system s
0
and h
ss
0
the latent hardening coefcient, coupling hardening of s due to activity of s
0
. While only the
barrier effect of the PTS is explicitly accounted for, the other twinning systems can contribute to
the hardening of slip systems through the latent hardening parameter.
The second term of Eq. (2) depends on the directional mean free path d
s
mfp
dened by the assumed
lamellar spacing of the PTS for dislocations on system s. It represents the inuence of the GNDs over
the threshold stress (Karaman et al., 2000):
Ds
S
GND

H
s
GND
d
s
mfp
s
s
STAT
s
s
GND

Dc
s
: 4
The last term of Eq. (2) describes the directional HallPetch effect:
s
s
HP

H
s
HP

d
s
mfp
_ : 5
While the GND contribution is not so relevant at the strains considered here, the HallPetch term
plays an important role on hardening, especially during strain-path changes. In addition, the Hall
Petch effect introduces length scaling into the model. It has been proposed that originally mobile dis-
locations will become sessile once the lattice in which they reside has been twinned (Basinski et al.,
1997). Basinski et al. further proposed that these inherited dislocations will harden slip inside the
twins. However, because the relative effects of these hardening mechanisms have yet to be experi-
mentally differentiated, only the HallPetch effect will be used in our model.
G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880 869
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3.3. Hardening of twinning systems
When the CG twin model was applied to Zr, the hardening law given by Eq. (2) was used to describe
the hardening behavior of both slip and twinning systems. While this hardening law is appropriate to
describe the hardening associated with dislocation creation and annihilation, in connection to twin-
ning it should only be regarded as an empirical law that provides a dependence of twin hardening
with accumulated shear. We veried that, in the case of Mg, it is not possible to adjust the parameters
of such law to the experimental hardening behavior observed during strain-path changes. As a conse-
quence, we present here a deformation mode specic law to describe the hardening of twinning sys-
tems, of the form:
s
TWS
s
TWS
0

M
s
M
1 exp
h
M
C
M
s
M
_ _ _ _
; 6
where the sum is made over all the slip modes M (basal hai, prism hai, pyramidal hc + ai) that can be
activated during deformation, and C
M
represents the accumulated shear for all the slip systems
belonging to the slip mode M.
While this new hardening law is empirical, it provides for a selective inuence of different defor-
mation modes upon twinning, which is more consistent with the sparse experimental and theoretical
information available. For example, it has been proposed by Mendelson (1970) that non-planar dislo-
cation dissociations may be the mechanism of twin nucleation for HCP materials. As a consequence:
(a) twin nucleation is delayed until specic dislocation structures develop and (b) such dissociation
may be favorable for one type of dislocation but not for another. In what concerns twin growth, atomic
scale simulations done for Mg and a-Ti (Serra and Bacon, 1996; Pond et al., 1999) suggest that twin
interfaces may propagate (grow) via mixed basal dislocations that, upon arrival at the twin interface,
dissociate into dipolar twin dislocations which propagate and advance the interface. As a consequence,
twin propagation should be coupled to dislocation activation (Serra and Bacon, 1996). Moreover, dur-
ing strain-path changes, it was observed that the onset of twinning happens at a higher stress once the
material has been deformed by a slip dominated process. Lou and coworkers (Lou et al., 2007) pro-
posed that pyramidal hc + ai dislocations increase the twin nucleation stress.
The empirical hardening law that we propose here for tensile twins reects all these observations.
The twinning threshold stress value increases or decreases with the amount of shear accommodated by
the various slip modes. The nucleation and growth phases of twinning are simulated by lowering the
value of the twinning threshold stress when strain is accommodated by specic slip systems. For this
purpose, negative values are given in Eq. (6) to the parameters s
M
and h
M
of basal and prism slip. In the
case studied here, it is assumed that hai dislocations on basal planes are the most likely to induce twin
nucleation and growth, based on atomistic simulations studies (Serra and Bacon, 1996) and the obser-
vations that basal slip is easy to activate in most orientations. Tensile twinning and hc + ai dislocations
on pyramidal planes are competing mechanisms. However, during strain-path changes, it is possible
to have previously induced hc + ai dislocations interact with twins and harden them. In the new hard-
ening law it is possible to describe this phenomenon by giving positive values to the parameters s
M
and h
M
. Fig. 6b shows the evolution of the twinning threshold stress with the amount of shear accom-
modated by each slip mode. The determination of the hardening parameters associated with these
curves is explained in Section 4 of this paper.
The same hardening laws are applied in the twinned regions to predict the evolution of the slip and
twinning threshold stresses as in the matrix. For slip, the same hardening parameters are used in the
matrix and in the twin. However, the experimental evidence suggests that detwinning is easier than
twinning (Lou et al., 2007); therefore, the hardening parameters, which describe the threshold stress
evolution for twinning are different inside the matrix and inside the twins (detwinning), as discussed
below.
3.4. Detwinning
It has been experimentally observed for Mg that when the loading direction is changed, grains that
had previously twinned can detwin easily (Caceres et al., 2003; Kleiner and Uggowitzer, 2004; Lou
870 G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880
Author's personal copy
et al., 2007; Wang and Huang, 2007). The detwinning mechanism may require less stress to be acti-
vated because, since the twin already exists, no nucleation is necessary. In addition, back-stresses
engendered by the twin growth, may aid the detwinning process (Wu et al., in press). To model this
mechanism we favor the activation of the PTS inside the twin by setting a high value, upon reloading,
of the CRSSs of the other twin systems inside the twinned region. Such procedure prevents them from
being activated upon reloading. Once the PTS has been activated inside the twin, instead of creating a
secondary twin, the volume of the twin that should be occupied by this secondary twin is transferred
from the original twin to the matrix. This process can continue until the entire twin volume has been
transferred back to the initial grain, at which point the grain is twin free.
4. Application of the CG twin model to AZ31B Mg
4.1. Hardening parameters
We determine one set of hardening parameters, given in Table 2, to reproduce all our experimental
data. The single crystal hardening parameters described in the previous section are obtained for each
deformation mode by tting the experimental stressstrain curves obtained for monotonic TTC, IPC
and IPT and one of the IPC and TTC reloading experiments (cf. Fig. 7). The validity of these parameters
is conrmed by verifying that the predicted deformed textures correspond to the measured ones and,
when experimental data is available, that the observed deformation modes are predicted. Moreover,
we used the second TTC and IPC reloading curves as well as experimental data for monotonic com-
pression and tension realized parallel to the transverse direction of the initial plate (these curves
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20
0
50
100
150
200
250
Basal <a>
Prismatic <a>
Pyramidal <c+a>
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20
0
50
100
150
200
250
Basal <a>
Prismatic <a>
Pyramidal <c+a>

S
(
M
P
a
)

T
W
S
(
M
P
a
)

Fig. 6. (a) Evolution of the threshold stress s

s
with the total shear strain Cfor the three slip modes, (b) inuence of the three slip
modes on the twinning threshold stress s
TWS
. C
M
represents the shear strain associated with the slip mode M.
Table 2a
Single crystal hardening parameters for AZ31B Mg deformed at room temperature, basal hai, prismatic hai and pyramidal hc + ai
slip parameters
s
0
(MPa) s
1
(MPa) h
0
(MPa) H
GND
(MPa lm) H
HP
(MPa lm
1/2
) Latent hardening
Basal Prism Pyra
Basal 2 52 3000 10
5
100 1 2 35
Prism 60 60 600 0 100 1 1 1
Pyra 50 70 2200 0 380 1 1 1
G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880 871
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are not shown in this paper). The last verication was made by comparing the amount of twinning
measured and predicted by our model.
The hardening parameters associated with the three slip modes are determined using the mono-
tonic TTC and IPC ow stress curves. The HallPetch coefcients describing the interactions between
these slip modes and twins are selectively given by the stressstrain curves obtained during in-plane
deformation: during IPT, the small volume fraction of twins which form are oriented favorably to acti-
vate prismatic hai, and during IPC, the twins are oriented favorably to activate pyramidal hc + ai slip
and signicant basal hai slip also occurs. The IPC stressstrain curve is also used to determine most
of the hardening parameters associated with tensile twinning. However, we also need to use one of
the IPC reload experiment to determine the parameters describing the inuence of pyramidal slip
on tensile twinning. The last set of parameters to be determined corresponds to the detwinning mech-
anism and these parameters are tted using the TTC reload data.
The evolution of the threshold stresses with the shear strain accumulated by each slip mode can be
seen in Fig. 6a. The initial CRSS values of all the slip modes are given by adding s
0
and the HallPetch
factor corresponding to our initial grain size of 13 lm. For our simulations, the starting CRSS ratios
between prismatic and basal slip and between pyramidal and basal slip are 2.9 and 5.2, respectively.
These values respect the general trend reported in the literature that shows that the easiest slip mode
is basal hai and the hardest one is pyramidal hc + ai (Barnett et al., 2006; Clausen et al., 2008; Jain and
Agnew, 2007).
The evolution of the twinning threshold stress with the shear accommodated by each slip mode is
shown in Fig. 6b. The new hardening law that we have implemented for twinning has two advantages:
(1) we can simulate a nucleation phase by assigning a high initial threshold stress for twinning and
have this value decrease once some dislocations have been introduced in the material, (2) we can de-
scribe the hardening effect of specic dislocations onto twin propagation. The initial value of CRSS for
tensile twinning is 55 MPa and that value decreases rapidly when basal and/or prismatic hai disloca-
tions are introduced in the material due to the negative values of s
M
and h
M
for both basal and pris-
matic slip (basal slip affects the twinning threshold stress more than prismatic slip). The values of s
M
and h
M
for pyramidal hc + ai are positive, which leads to the hardening of twinning due to the presence
of these dislocations.
A similar approach is used to reproduce the detwinning mechanism. In the matrix, the twinning
hardening parameters associated to basal and prismatic slip were used to simulate a twinning nucle-
ation phase. As this nucleation phase is non-existent in the case of detwinning (Lou et al., 2007), the
twinning (or more appropriately detwinning) hardening parameters inside the twins due to basal and
prismatic slip are taken as 0. Thus, it is assumed that these two slip modes do not inuence detwin-
ning. However, the presence of pyramidal dislocations inside the twins is likely to inhibit detwinning
so we have used relatively large values to describe the inuence of pyramidal slip onto detwinning.
Moreover, it has been shown experimentally that the CRSS for detwinning is equal (Wang and
Huang, 2007) or slightly smaller (Lou et al., 2007) than for twinning. In our model, the initial threshold
value for detwinning, s
DETWS
0
, corresponds to the saturation threshold stress for twinning (Fig. 6b) once
basal and prismatic slip effects have been completely accounted for, i.e.
s
DETWS
0
s
TWS
0
s
basal
s
prism
; 7
where s
TWS
0
, s
basal
and s
prism
represent the hardening parameters described in Eq. (6) and associated
with twinning inside the matrix. The reader is reminded that the latter two terms are negative, thus
the detwinning stress is, in general, lower than the twinning.
Table 2b
Single crystal hardening parameters for AZ31B Mg deformed at room temperature, tensile twinning parameters in the matrix and
in the twins
s
0
(MPa) s
basal
(MPa) h
basal
(MPa) s
prism
(MPa) h
prism
(MPa) s
pyra
(MPa) h
pyra
(MPa) d
c
f
max
In matrix 55 30 15,000 5 20,000 50 1200 0.25 0.9
In twins 20 0 0 0 0 20 100 0.25 0.9
872 G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880
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4.2. Monotonic deformation
Predicted stressstrain curves and textures for monotonic TTC, IPT and IPC are shown in Figs. 7 and
2, respectively, where they are compared with the experimental data. The predicted behavior of the
Mg alloy AZ31B was obtained using the set of hardening parameters given in Table 2. In Fig. 7 we also
report the predicted relative deformation mode activities in the matrix and in the twinned regions,
and the volume fraction of the twinned material. The relative activity is dened as the ratio of the
mode activity and the total activity. The former is the sumover all grains of the shear rates contributed
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15
0
100
200
300
400
Experiment
Simulation
S
T
R
E
S
S

(
M
P
a
)
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
M
O
D
E

A
C
T
I
V
I
T
Y

I
N

M
A
T
R
I
X
M
O
D
E

A
C
T
I
V
I
T
Y

I
N

M
A
T
R
I
X
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
M
O
D
E

A
C
T
I
V
I
T
Y

I
N

T
W
I
N
S
Twin Vol Frac
Prismatic <a>
Basal <a>
Pyramidal <c+a>
Tensile Twinning
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15
0
100
200
300
400
S
T
R
E
S
S

(
M
P
a
)
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
M
O
D
E

A
C
T
I
V
I
T
Y

I
N

T
W
I
N
S
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15
0
100
200
300
400
S
T
R
E
S
S

(
M
P
a
)
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
M
O
D
E

A
C
T
I
V
I
T
Y

I
N

M
A
T
R
I
X
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
M
O
D
E

A
C
T
I
V
I
T
Y
I
N

T
W
I
N
S
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15
0
100
200
300
400
S
T
R
E
S
S

(
M
P
a
)
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
M
O
D
E

A
C
T
I
V
I
T
Y

I
N

M
A
T
R
I
X
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
M
O
D
E

A
C
T
I
V
I
T
Y

I
N

T
W
I
N
S
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15
0
100
200
300
400
S
T
R
E
S
S

(
M
P
a
)
STRAIN
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
M
O
D
E

A
C
T
I
V
I
T
Y

I
N

M
A
T
R
I
X
STRAIN
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
M
O
D
E

A
C
T
I
V
I
T
Y

I
N

T
W
I
N
S
STRAIN
Fig. 7. Comparison between the experimental (symbols) and predicted (solid lines) stressstrain curves, predicted deformation
mode activities in matrix and in twins (the prismatic activity is represented by open squares, the basal activity by open
triangles, the pyramidal activity by crosses and the tensile twinning activity by solid circles. The solid line in the activity plot in
the twins represents the evolution of the twin volume fraction with strain) for (a) monotonic TTC, (b) monotonic IPT, (c)
monotonic IPC, (d) TTC followed by IPC, and (e) IPC followed by TTC.
G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880 873
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by a given deformation mode, weighted by the grain volume fraction. The latter is the sum of all mode
activities.
During TTC, the strain is accommodated by two slip modes, basal hai and pyramidal hc + ai, and
twinning is not activated (as explained earlier, compression twinning and double twinning were
not considered in these simulations), as can be seen in Fig. 7a. This activity sharpens the main basal
component and does not change the texture of the material substantially after 5% deformation. Fig. 2
shows that the measured and predicted textures are very similar to the initial texture.
IPT is mostly accommodated by prismatic and basal hai slip in the matrix (see Fig. 7b) along with a
small contribution of tensile twinning (Jain et al., 2008). The effects of twinning can be observed in
both the measured and predicted basal pole gures (Fig. 2) where some of the grains have reoriented
with their c-axis parallel to the transverse direction (TD). Notably, the model predicts that 8% of the
material is reoriented by twins, which is in agreement with the experimental value of 7% obtained
from integrating the texture prole. There is, however, a larger spread of the twin orientations in
the measured texture which explains the difference in the pole gure intensities between experiment
and simulation.
At the beginning of IPC, two deformation modes are active in the matrix: basal slip and tensile
twinning (Fig. 7c), with twinning increasing its contribution until about 3% strain, while the basal
activity decreases. After 5% strain, the model predicts that about 70% of the aggregate has reoriented
by twinning, and that strain is then mostly accommodated by hard hc + ai pyramidal slip inside the
twins. The initial threshold stress associated with the slip modes inside the twins are high due to the
HallPetch effect. But once the twin lamellae grow and merge together to create thicker regions inside
the grains, the CRSS associated with pyramidal slip decreases (due to the reduction of the HallPetch
term in the threshold stress expression) and the twin can plastically deform. At 10% strain, the model
predicts that the twins represent 86% of the material (the experimental value was estimated at 90%) so
most of the deformation is now accommodated by hard modes within the twins, which explains the
drastic increase in the ow stress produced by a change from easy deformation of the matrix to hard
deformation of the twins. In addition to this basic texture hardening effect, the CG model is able to
connect some of the rapid hardening with the directional HallPetch effect, as discussed above.
Fig. 2 shows that the predicted texture after 10% IPC is in good agreement with the measured texture.
Most of the grains have been reoriented such that their c-axis is now parallel to the compression
direction.
4.3. Effect of prior slip on subsequent twinning
Using the same set of hardening parameters, we were able to predict the TTC followed by IPC
strain-path change response (see Fig. 7d for ow stress curves and predicted mode activities in matrix
and twins). During the pre-loading stage of the deformation, basal hai and pyramidal hc + ai disloca-
tions are introduced in the material. The hc + ai dislocations experience a low resolved shear stress
(are less mobile) once we change the direction of loading and, in addition, they may act as barriers
to twin nucleation and propagation, as suggested by Lou et al. (2007) and the hardening parameters
in Table 2b reect that the more hc + ai dislocations in the material, the harder tensile twinning be-
comes. In Fig. 8 we have plotted the experimental and predicted stressstrain curves for two different
amounts of pre-straining. The CG model captures the increase in the reloading yield strength with
pre-straining: for monotonic IPC the predicted yield strength is equal to 100 MPa, after 5% TTC the
predicted IPC reload yield strength is 135 MPa and after 10% TTC, 160 MPa. These values match the
experimental ndings. However, as this model does not include back-stresses (or kinematic harden-
ing), we are not able to capture the initial reversal behavior of this material, which may be termed
a generalized Bauschinger effect.
The comparison of the experimental monotonic and reload IPC stressstrain curves reveals that not
only the yield strength changes but also the length of the initial plateau and the slope of the curve be-
fore reaching the saturation stress (Fig. 8). These differences seem to be due to a change in the defor-
mation modes activated during the IPC reload. The transition from easy to hard deformation is less
abrupt once the material has been pre-strained. As we have shown earlier, this transition from easy
to hard deformation is due to the transition from twinning accommodating strain in the matrix to slip
874 G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880
Author's personal copy
accommodating strain in the twinned regions. The fact that this transition is less abrupt during reload-
ing suggests that while twinning is occurring in the matrix, another deformation mode is also accom-
modating strain either in the matrix or in the twins (Morozumi et al., 1976), explaining why twinning
is occurring over a larger strain. However, our model does not predict such behavior. The matrix and
twin activity plots for this strain-path change show that the matrix deforms mostly by tensile twin-
ning and after 4% reload, pyramidal hc + ai slip in the twins dominate the deformation. This activity
pattern is similar as the one obtained during monotonic IPC.
The measured and predicted textures are analogous, and the measured and predicted twin volume
fractions at the end of deformation are 65% and 72%, respectively. While the nal values compare well
with the experiment, the stress evolution indicates that twins grow at a faster rate in the model. This
proves that our model does not yet capture all the consequences of pre-straining onto the mechanical
behavior of the material. Twinning should be slowed down while another deformation mode would
complement it to accommodate strain. However, to adapt the model, one will need more experimental
information concerning which deformation modes are active during reloading.
4.4. Detwinning
This paper presents a rst attempt to predict the detwinning mechanism during strain-path
changes. In Fig. 7e, the stressstrain curve and predicted activities in the matrix and in the twins
are displayed for a sample that has been rst subjected to 5% strain in IPC and then 10% strain in
TTC. After the pre-loading phase of the test, the texture of the sample has changed drastically and
our model predicts that 72% of the material has twinned. As a consequence the TTC reloading behavior
of the material is totally different from the monotonic behavior. The reloading yield strength drops
from 180 to 90 MPa and the hardening evolution is characteristic of a material deforming by twinning
instead of slip, as it is the case for the monotonic TTC deformation. Moreover, microscopy shows that
the twins created during the pre-loading phase disappear during re-loading (see Fig. 4b). This was also
observed in the study by (Lou et al., 2007).
Detwinning occurs when the twin system that is active inside a twin shares the same twin plane
with the PTS that originally created the twin. As shear is accommodated by that twin systeminside the
twin, the twin transforms back into the matrix orientation and shrinks, while the volume fraction of
the matrix increases. Our model allows for the twin to disappear completely, as can be seen in the
twin fraction evolution shown in Fig. 7e. Once we change the direction of loading, there is twinning
activity in the twins and the twin volume fraction decreases until it becomes equal to zero after
roughly 4% strain, at which point all the deformation is accommodated by basal hai and pyramidal
hc + ai slip in the matrix.
Using the value of s
DETWS
0
for tensile twinning in the twins obtained from Eq. (7), the CG model can
capture the TTC reloading yield strength. We can also reproduce the rapid increase in the hardening
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20
0
100
200
300
400
Experiments
Simulations
S
t
r
e
s
s

(
M
P
a
)
Strain
Fig. 8. Effect of the amount of pre-strain on twinning during IPC reloads. The grey curves represent the results for 5% TTC pre-
strain and the black curves the results for 10% TTC pre-strain.
G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880 875
Author's personal copy
rate that corresponds to the matrix starting to deform. But, again, the model does not reproduce the
long initial plateau present in the experimental stressstrain curve after reload. In the case of mono-
tonic IPC, the CG model predicts the plateau by activating easy basal slip in the matrix, in addition to
twinning, while slip activity in the twins starts after 4.5% strain and leads to the observed rapid change
in the ow stress. During TTC reloading, on the other hand, the model predicts that the matrix starts
deforming by basal slip as soon as detwinning has started (see activity plot in Fig. 7e). But the CRSS for
basal slip in the matrix is higher than the CRSS for tensile twinning in the twins because of the Hall
Petch effect. As a consequence, the macroscopic stress rapidly reaches the saturation value because
basal slip has become now a hard deformation mode. After 4% reload strain, the model predicts that
the material is totally detwinned, and that the deformation is now accommodated by basal hai and
pyramidal hc + ai in the matrix since, after detwinning, the texture is similar to the initial texture,
and the material deforms by activating the same deformation modes as during monotonic TTC.
Fig. 2 shows the measured and predicted textures for the material deformed 5% by IPC followed by
10% TTC. The predicted texture reproduces the general experimental features; specically, it shows
the reorientation of the grains such that their c-axis are back to be almost parallel to the normal direc-
tion of the plate. We attribute the predicted depletion at the center of the basal pole gure, to exces-
sive pyramidal hc + ai slip activity in the twins during pre-loading. This rotates the twinned domains in
such a way that, upon detwinning, the c-axis is reoriented away from its original position.
5. Discussion
Jain and Agnew (2006) made a rst attempt to predict the strain-path change behavior of the
AZ31B magnesium alloy using the VPSC model. In their simulations, they treated twinning using
the PTR scheme that accounts for twin reorientation but does not incorporate the microstructure fea-
tures inherent to the presence of twins in the grains. Moreover, twinning was not assumed to harden
due to the presence of dislocations. Although they obtained good predictions for the monotonic defor-
mation of the material, the strain-path change predictions were far from the experimental data. The
model they used showed the role played by texture evolution on the response of the material but
did not capture the different hardening evolution due to the presence of dislocation networks and
twins in the material. By incorporating the CG twin model in the VPSC polycrystal model and by den-
ing a new hardening law for twinning, we have dramatically improved the predictions of the harden-
ing and texture evolutions during strain-path change.
Although the HallPetch parameters that we are characterizing in our model (see Table 2) corre-
spond to the barrier effect associated with twin boundaries, we used our model to predict the mono-
tonic IPT response of the same alloy with different initial grain sizes. During IPT, most of the strain
needs to be accommodated by prismatic slip so the HallPetch effect observed experimentally (cf.
Fig. 9) is mainly caused by the hardening of prismatic slip due to a difference in grain size. Experimen-
tally, the overall HallPetch coefcient for Mg alloy, AZ31B, was determined to be equal to
200 MPa lm
1/2
(Jain et al., 2008) while our tting process gave a value of 100 MPa lm
1/2
for prism
hai slip. (Given the initial texture and loading direction during IPT, the Schmid factor for prismatic slip
is near maximum, m 2, so this is viewed as very good agreement.) With this value of the HallPetch
parameter for prismatic slip, we were able to closely reproduce the stressstrain response of the same
Mg alloy having initial grain sizes of 42 and 89 lm as shown in Fig. 9.
The new hardening model for twinning that we introduce in this paper has been guided by exper-
imental observations. It has been observed that twinning in polycrystalline magnesium does not start
from the onset of deformation but some dislocations are introduced in the material before twins are
observed (Agnew et al., 2003; Brown et al., 2007; Clausen et al., 2008). It is likely that twin nucleation
requires stress concentration associated with dislocation structures, such as pile-ups. Our model cap-
tures this phenomenon by having a high initial value for the tensile twinning CRSS and then decreas-
ing the CRSS once basal (or prismatic) slip has accommodated the initial strain. On the matrix activity
plot of Fig. 7c, one can see that at the start of the deformation the activity of basal slip is higher than
the activity of tensile twinning but rapidly the situation is reversed and twinning accommodates most
of the deformation after 1% strain. Work is in progress to understand the mechanism of twin
876 G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880
Author's personal copy
nucleation in hcp metals (Capolungo and Beyerlein, in press) and to incorporate this understanding
into VPSC.
The second experimental observation that we have used concerns the IPC reloading yield strength
increase after the material has been pre-strained in TTC and this observation suggests that pyramidal
hc + ai dislocations affect the twin nucleation stress (Lou et al., 2007). In our model, we tested this
hypothesis by hardening tensile twinning once pyramidal hc + ai slip has started to accommodate
the deformation. This particular feature does allow us to predict the higher IPC yield strength at
reloading. Again, it is admitted that there may be a role of {1011} compression twinning, which
has been observed in Mg alloys (Koike, 2005; Jiang et al., 2006; Barnett, 2007b) but was ignored in
the present modeling.
Although our model gives reasonable predictions for the strain-path change stressstrain curves, it
does not yet capture all the observed phenomena. For example, in the case of TTC followed by IPC (see
Fig. 8), the model fails to capture the initial rapid hardening rate (this is especially noticeable after the
material has been pre-strained 10% in TTC), the longer initial plateau and the softer increase in the
hardening rate observed during the reloads in comparison with the monotonic response. The initial
yield of the reload response is believed to be due to a Bauschinger effect due to basal dislocation rever-
sal, which is not accounted for by the model. A version of the VPSC model incorporating cut-through of
planar dislocation walls and dislocation-based reversal mechanism has been developed for copper
(Beyerlein and Tom, 2007). It is suggested that future research should seek to extend such dislocation
density-based models developed for fcc materials to hcp deformation. In the present work, we ne-
glected the initial 2% strain of the reloading curves while simulating the stressstrain curves. Finally,
the experimentally observed longer plateau and softer hardening during IPC reloads seem to be tied to
the activity of another deformation mode, either in the matrix or in the twins, complementing the
twinning activity. However, there is no experimental data currently available to test this hypothesis
and no combination of model parameters was capable of reproducing this aspect of the ow curves.
The validity of the model was put to a nal test by comparing the experimental and predicted evo-
lutions of the hardening rate as a function of stress (Fig. 10). During monotonic TTC and IPT, the hard-
ening rate decreases with stress, which is typical of slip deformation. Our model quantitatively
predicts the same behavior. During the three other experiments, the hardening rate starts by increas-
ing drastically, reaches a maximum at an equivalent stress of about 125 MPa, and then decreases rap-
idly. Such behavior is typical of twinning dominated strain accommodation, and the monotonic IPC
shows the greatest hardening rate. While our model fails to reproduce the magnitude of the maximum
hardening rate associated with monotonic IPC, the predicted IPC stressstrain curve is very close to
the experimental data and the principal features associated with twinning are captured by this model.
Concerning the reload experiments, the initial slope of the hardening rate is lower and the maxi-
mum smaller than for monotonic IPC. Our model does not entirely capture this behavior, which we
attribute to the inuence that the pre-straining state of internal stress has on the reloading hardening
rate. For example: the predicted evolution of the hardening rate during IPC reload is almost identical
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10
0
100
200
300
Experiments Simulations
13 microns 13 microns
42 microns 42 microns
89 microns 89 microns
S
t
r
e
s
s

(
M
P
a
)
strain
Fig. 9. HallPetch effect due to the initial grain size during IPT. Comparison of the experimental and predicted stressstrain
curves.
G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880 877
Author's personal copy
to the monotonic prediction instead of being softer. The maximum value is obtained for the same
equivalent stress. This means that most of the material is predicted to have twinned at the same stress
as during monotonic IPC. Experimentally, it is observed that the maximum is reached at a higher value
of stress, showing that twinning is delayed or happens over a longer period during the reload. We be-
lieve that this is additional proof that another mechanism has to be active at the beginning of the
reloading experiment to counterbalance the effect of twinning on the hardening rate. Similarly, we
see that the initial increase in the predicted hardening rate of TTC reload is steeper than for monotonic
IPC and that the maximum value is obtained for a lower equivalent stress. These two observations
contradict the experimental evidence. The effect of detwinning seems to be counterbalanced by the
activation of an additional deformation mechanism, which our model does not predict.
In this work we present a simple model to predict the detwinning behavior of the material. The
twinned region of the grain that has been created during the loading phase of the deformation is al-
lowed to shrink until it disappears totally and the grain is then constituted entirely of matrix. We are
able to capture the macroscopic yield strength during reloading but the extended plateau correspond-
ing to detwinning is not well-predicted. The present CG twin model, only one twin system, the PTS,
creates a twinned region in the grain. The other twin systems are allowed to accommodate deforma-
tion by shear but not to crystallographically reorient the matrix. When the loading direction is chan-
ged, this model only allows the domain associated with the PTS to detwin and, furthermore,
suppresses other twin activity (secondary twinning) inside the PTS. Since only one twin system is
not sufcient to accommodate axial compression, other systems need to be active either in the matrix
or in the twins. Our model predicts that from the onset of reloading there is twinning activity in the
twins and basal slip activity in the matrix. Due to the HallPetch and latent hardening parameters
associated with basal slip, the CRSS of the basal slip mode in the matrix is very high, which explains
the predicted rapid increase in the ow stress after only 1.5% reload strain.
This paper points out the necessity of incorporating in polycrystalline models detwinning as a defor-
mation mechanism to predict complex loadings of Mg alloys. To better understand this phenomenon
more experimental evidence is necessary. For example it could be interesting to realize in situ TEM
experiments on pre-strained samples to see howtwins react when the loading conditions are reversed.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Ofce of Basic Energy Sciences, Project FWP 06SCPE401. This
material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No.
DMI-0322917. The authors wish to thank Rupalee Mulay for the optical micrographs.
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
T
h
e
t
a
TTC IPC IPT
reload IPC reload TTC
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
T
h
e
t
a
Equivalent Stess (MPa)
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
Equivalent Stess (MPa)
Experimental Simulations
Fig. 10. Comparison of the experimental and predicted hardening rates for the ve stressstrain curves shown on Fig. 7. For the
strain-path change experiments only the hardening rate during the reloading phase of the experiments are plotted in this graph
and are labeled reload IPC and reload TTC. The y-axis represents the hardening rate (dr/de) and the x-axis represents the
equivalent stress (r r
y
).
878 G. Proust et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 861880
Author's personal copy
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