Met. Mater. Int., Vol. 19, No. 5 (2013), pp. 1005~1019 doi: 10.1007/s12540-013-5013-3 Mechanical Modeling of Macroscopic Behavior for Anisotropic and Heterogeneous Metal Alloys O. Chahaoui 1,2 , M. L. Fares 2, * , D. Piot 3 , and F. Montheillet 3 1 Laghrour Abbes University, Sciences and Technology Institute, 40000, Khenchela, Algeria 2 Badji-Mokhtar University, Mechanics of Materials and Plant Maintenance Laboratory (LR3MI), P.O. Box 12, 42000, Annaba, Algeria 3 Centre SMS, CNRS UMR 5307, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines, 158 Cours Fauriel, 42023, Saint Etienne, France (received date: 27 December 2012 / accepted date: 28 January 2013) The present investigative work was focused on modeling the effect of through-thickness texture gradients on the global mechanical behavior of a rolled ferritic stainless steel sheet. The material was experimentally characterized according to the needs of the analysis. First, a homogeneous rolled sheet was analytically described, based on Hill's formalism of generalized materials. Then, a heterogeneous sheet was analyzed through two ana- lytic approaches. The predictive capability of the resulting approaches was also proven in relation to the choice of the pseudo-anisotropic coefficients selected from fictitious materials. Finally, the application of a simple method, called continuum mechanics of textured polycrystals, taking into account crystallographic considerations, was adopted. As a result, this method was found to be an effective way to model the mechanical behavior of an aniso- tropic and heterogeneous sheet, replicating the evolution of experimental yield stress and plastic strain ratio either in terms of evolution or in those of level values. An attempt to estimate the impact of low-texture gradi- ents on the heterogeneity of any industrial metal sheet is also made. Key words: hot working, plasticity, texture, rolling, tensile test 1. INTRODUCTION Ferritic stainless sheets steels (FSS) are usually produced by hot and cold rolling processes, followed by annealing treat- ment. Thermal factors (e.g. temperature gradients across the sheet resulting from the hot rolling) and boundary conditions (e.g. friction between rollers and the metal sheet during cold rolling) act together to cause significant deformation hetero- geneities in sheet thickness. These processes form texture gradients that have the ability to affect the formability and drawability of the metal sheet, in this instance the final mechanical properties [1]. It is well established that if these texture gradients are not fully eliminated or modified by the subsequent annealing treatment, the final product will be prone to defects, such as thinning, earring and ridging [2-5]. Appropriate control of these defects lies in the optimization of the material formability through two possible alternatives. The first is to conduct specific and complex experimental investigations by monitoring the process conditions that cause disruptions in the production cycle, which are costly for manufacturers. A second option is to perform apposite mod- eling and simulation procedures that can be promising sub- stitutes to provide qualitative and quantitative outcomes, thus contributing to a better prediction of the mechanical sheet behavior at a lower cost. For this purpose, several alter- native and versatile numerical/analytical models have been proposed (see [6] and the references therein). Most of them, essentially based on Hill's yield criterion [7,8], include either phenomenological or physical considerations, and are intended to describe in a more or less comprehensive way, the stress- strain response of the anisotropic rolled sheet on both micro- scopic and macroscopic scales. In many examined cases, Taylor assumptions (homogenization technique), wherein it is assumed that grains experience the same strain as the imposed macroscopic one, are adopted to achieve the micro- to-macro transition [9]. Corresponding findings were mostly focused on numerical considerations (e.g. finite-element models [10]), and only a limited number of them were related to physical considerations, such as crystallographic texture. This paper is a complement of an earlier work [11] and describes the main stages of modeling, via analytical approaches, the effect of through-thickness texture gradients on the global mechanical behavior of a rolled and annealed FSS industrial sheet. *Corresponding author: fares.lamine@univ-annaba.org ©KIM and Springer, Published 10 September 2013