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Computational Materials Science 43 (2008) 641–645

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Severe plastic deformation and strain localization in groove pressing

Seung Chae Yoon a,b, A. Krishnaiah b,c, Uday Chakkingal d, Hyoung Seop Kim a,b,*
a
Department of Nano Materials Engineering, Chungnam National University, Yuseong, Daejeon 305-764, Republic of Korea
b
BK21 Education Center for Advanced Intelligent Components and Materials, Chungnam National University, Yuseong,
Daejeon 305-764, Republic of Korea
c
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College of Engineering (Autonomous), Osmania University, Hyderabad 500 007, India
d
Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600 036, India

Received 1 December 2007; received in revised form 23 December 2007; accepted 9 January 2008
Available online 4 March 2008

Abstract

Elasto-plastic finite element analysis was carried out for analyzing the severe plastic deformation behavior of copper specimens during
groove pressing. Deformation localization was studied in terms of strain variations along the longitudinal direction. Plastic strain is lower
at the local interface between the shear and the flat regions, which receives very little shear during the pressing cycle. Strain localization is
more intensified with the number of groove pressing cycles, although the average strain level increases.
Ó 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

PACS: 62.20. x; 62.20.F ; 62.20.fq

Keywords: Finite element method; Severe plastic deformation; Groove pressing; Strain localization; Copper; Deformation homogeneity

1. Introduction was flattened/straightened by using two flat dies, shown

Severe plastic deformation (SPD) is a well developed
process for grain refinement in bulk metals and alloys to
submicron or ultrafine grain (UFG) level. There are several
SPD techniques that have been investigated, like equal
channel angular pressing (ECAP) [1], high pressure torsion
[2], equal channel angular rolling [3], accumulative roll
bonding [4], and groove pressing (GP) [5–10], to obtain fine
grains in the bulk materials. ECAP is one of the most
promising and commonly applied SPD process for bulk
materials in the form of rods or bars. But GP is a challeng-
ing method for producing UFG microstructures in sheet
metals.
In the present study, simulations of GP were carried out
in five stages as shown in Fig. 1. The specimen was pressed
between two grooved dies in the first stage shown in
Fig. 1a. During the second stage, the pressed specimen
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 42 821 6596; fax: +82 42 822 5850.
E-mail address: hskim@cnu.kr (H.S. Kim).
in Fig. 1b. In the third stage shown in Fig. 1c the top die
was shifted towards right hand side (RHS) about one
groove length (equivalent to width of the groove 5 mm,
where the undeformed regions are deformed in the next
stage). The fourth and fifth stages are the repetition of
the first and second stages, in which the flattened specimen
during second stage was pressed between two grooved dies
shown in Fig. 1d and flattened again by using two flat dies
shown in Fig. 1e, respectively. In earlier studies of GP [7,8]
the specimen was rotated 180° in the plane of pressings.
These five stages (two groove pressings, two flattens and
top die shifting) comprise one cycle/pass. A groove angle
h of 45° was used in the present study. The GP process
has several advantages, such as UFG microstructures in
metals and its applicability to thin sheet materials, which
cannot be applied to the most widely used SPD processes
like ECAP.
The GP process has been investigated by several
researchers [5–10], but plastic deformation during the pro-
cessing has so far not been examined theoretically. The

0927-0256/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.commatsci.2008.01.007
642 S.C. Yoon et al. / Computational Materials Science 43 (2008) 641–645
Fig. 1. Schematic of groove pressing process showing 5 stages: (a) first pressing; (b) first flattening; (c) top die shifting towards RHS; (d) second pressing;
and (e) second flattening [5].
finite element method (FEM) has been successfully
employed for simulation of ECAP process [11–16]. In the
present paper, the plastic deformation and the strain local-
ization of pure copper were investigated by using FEM
analysis up to two cycles of GP.
2. Finite element analysis
In order to investigate the plastic deformation and strain
localization behavior of the GP process, the elasto-plastic
FEM technique was adopted. There have been a couple
of previous investigations addressing the numerical analy-
sis of the deformation behavior in GP process [5–10]. Park
and his colleagues [5,6,9] simulated the GP process using
FEM, but did not discuss strain and stress distributions
in detail. In the present study, the plastic deformation
behavior of the specimen during groove pressing was sim-
ulated up to two passes using the commercial elasto-plastic
finite element analysis code ABAQUS/Standard [17]. An
isothermal two-dimensional plane-strain problem was con-
sidered, since deformation along the normal direction is
negligible. The number of initial four node isoparametric
plane-strain elements was 100,000. This number of ele-
ments was found to be sufficient to show the local deforma-
tion of the strain rate insensitive materials.
Pure copper material properties were used in all FE
simulations. The stress–strain curve of the high strain
range is necessary for the FEM calculations of the SPD
processes, but the high strain cannot be obtained by con-
ventional experimental techniques. Hence the stress–strain
curve obtained by the dislocation cell evolution model [18]
which can describe the hardening behavior of cell-forming
crystalline materials at large strains was used. Fig. 2
500
400
Stress (MPa)
300
200
100
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Strain
Fig. 2. Stress–strain curve of the pure copper material used in the finite
element simulations.
shows the stress–strain curve of the copper material used
in the simulation and calculated up to large strain (e = 5).
There are two kinds of coupling approaches for incorpo-
rating the constitutive equation based on the microstruc-
tural evolution in FEM; (i) semi-coupling approach in
which stress–strain responses at various strain rates are
calculated in advance and are used for FEM material
data, and (ii) full coupling approach in which the consti-
tutive equation is implemented in a FEM code using a
material subroutine, with the hardening responses at each
element being calculated at every step. Obviously, the full
coupling option provides more information and is gener-
ally more adequate. However, since it involves much
longer computation times and the results do not differ sig-
 S.C. Yoon et al. / Computational Materials Science 43 (2008) 641–645
nificantly from those of the semi-coupling approach, the
latter was taken in this study.
The specimen with dimensions of 80 mm in length and
5 mm in thickness was considered for simulations (width
is unity along the plane normal direction in plane-strain
condition). The specimen was modeled with CPE4 mesh
and dies were modeled with analytical rigid lines. The coef-
ficient of friction l between the die surface and the speci-
men was selected as 0.1, which is within a typical range
(0.05  0.1) in cold forming of metals.
3. Results and discussion
The specimen was subdivided into three regions accord-
ing to the deformation modes see Fig. 3: shear region,
undeformed flat region, and interface region between the
shear and flat regions. Plastic deformation occurs mainly
in the shear region, where the theoretical Von Mises equiv-
alent strain per pressing is 0.58, assuming the deformation
mode is simple shear (not pure shear!) and there is no inter-
action between shear region and flat regions. Fig. 4 shows
the variation of Von Mises equivalent strain distributions
in GP processed specimen after two cycles. The strain level
increased with the number of passes. From Fig. 4, it is
observed that the inhomogeneity within the specimen was
higher as the number of cycles increased. Looking at the
first cycle, see Fig. 5, the Von Mises equivalent strain e val-
ues after first pressing and first flattening in the first shear
region are e = 0.86 and e = 1.5, respectively, which are lar-
ger than theoretical values e = 0.58 and e = 1.16 of the sim-
ple shear during the first cycle. This is because of the
interaction between the shear region and flat region: more
deformation is generated in the shear region in GP than in
the region of simple shear alone. Because of the interaction
between the shear region and flat region, the deformation
mode in GP is not simple shear. The flat regions deform
by a negligible amount of deformation during the pressing
and flattening steps. During the flattening steps, the flat
Fig. 3. Schematic of groove pressing showing different deformation
regions in the specimen.
643
regions do not deform but the shear regions deform by
the same amount of shear strain in the reverse direction.
The top die was shifted in the simulation towards RHS
(or the specimen rotated about 180° in the plane of press-
ing) by the width of the flat regions (= that of the shear
region 5 mm), between the first flattening and the second
pressing steps, in order to impose deformation in the previ-
ously undeformed flat regions after first pressing (unde-
formed regions). It can be found that, the deformation
obtained in the first cycle was a little more homogeneous
after second flattening than after the first flattening; the dif-
ferences in strain e between the maximum and minimum
points after the first flattening and the second flattening
are e = 1.23 and e = 1.0, respectively. Even though strain
localization was relieved after the second cycle, compared
to the first cycle, strain is not as homogeneous as expected.
The strain between the maximum and minimum points
after the second flattening was smaller than that in the first
flattening due to the differences in the relative strength of
the flat regions surrounding the shear regions. During the
first pressing and flattening steps the relative strength of
the flat regions (symbol d position) surrounding the shear-
ing region (symbol N position) is weak, and deformation
diffuses out of the shear region. On the other hand, during
the second pressing and flattening steps the relative
strength of the flat regions (symbol N position, which
was the former shear region) surrounding the shear region
is high (symbol d position), and deformation is concen-
trated on the shearing regions. Hence, Von Mises equiva-
lent strain in the shearing region after the second
flattening (the first maximum value e = 1.81) is higher than
that after the first flattening (the second maximum value
e = 1.45). It should be noted that the strain e = 1.45 at
the shearing region (symbol N position) does not change
after the second pressing and flattening. It means the first
shear region hardly deforms during the second pressing
and flattening, because surrounding region (symbol d posi-
tion) is already strong.
One of the most important results of this simulation is
the existence of the strain minimum regions of symbol w
position. The strain minimum regions are the interfaces
between the shear and flat regions, as can be seen in
Fig. 5. These interface regions receive very little shear dur-
ing the pressing cycles and form the strain minimum points
of symbol w position. These interface regions are the main
cause for strain oscillation after each cycle of groove
pressing.
For the second cycle, the situation of strain localization
does not change. The differences in strain between the max-
imum and minimum points after first flattening and the sec-
ond flattening are 1.65 and 1.6, respectively. It should be
noted that strain distribution after the second flattening
is a little more homogeneous than that after the first flat-
tening, see Fig. 5. This difference in strains between the
maximum and minimum points after the first cycle and
the second cycle, shown in Fig. 6, are 1.0 and 1.6, respec-
tively. In other words, strain localization is more intensified
644 S.C. Yoon et al. / Computational Materials Science 43 (2008) 641–645

Fig. 4. Von Mises equivalent strain distributions in groove pressing during two cycles.

First pressing

Second pressing
2.2
2.0
1.8
1.6
Effective Strain

1.4
1.2
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2 First Flattening
Second Flattening
0.0
0 20 40 60 80
Distance (mm)

Fig. 5. Von Mises equivalent strain path plots along the horizontal line in the first cycle.

with the number of GP cycles, although the average strain same trend, because the stress gradient decreases with
level increases. strain. The nonuniformity of strain distribution shown in
Although the strain localization intensified with increas- Fig. 6 may not indicate the nonuniformity of the strength
ing number of GP cycles, stress need not always follow the (and microstructure) developed. This is shown in Fig. 7,
 S.C. Yoon et al. / Computational Materials Science 43 (2008) 641–645 645

4.0 4. Conclusions
3.5
Finite element analysis of the groove pressing process
3.0 was carried out to determine the deformation behavior of
pure copper up to two pressing cycles. The strain distribu-
Effective strain

2.5 tion along the longitudinal length of the specimen was also
analyzed. The strain obtained after the second cycle is more
2.0
inhomogeneous than that after the first cycle. FEM analy-
1.5 sis incorporating a dislocation-based microstructural con-
stitutive model is underway.
1.0
2nd cycle Acknowledgements
0.5
1st cycle
0.0 This work was supported by Korea Science & Engineer-
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
ing Foundation through the NRL Program (R0A-2007-
Distance (mm)
000-20104-0). A.K acknowledges the financial support of
Fig. 6. Von Mises equivalent strain path plots along the horizontal line the BK21 center through BK postdoctoral fellowship.
after the first and second cycles.
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