Effects of initial orientation, sample geometry and friction on anisotropy and crystallographic orientation changes in single crystal microcompression deformation: A crystal plasticity finite element study Original Research Article

The study presents crystal plasticity finite element simulations of cylindrical Cu single crystal micropillar compression tests. The aim is to study the influence of the stability of the initial crystal orientation, sample geometry (diameter-to-length ratio) and friction on the anisotropy and crystallographic orientation changes during such tests. Initial anisotropy (initial orientation) has a strong influence on the evolution of crystallographic orientation changes and also, to a minor extent, on the sample shape during compression. Pronounced orientation changes occur at an early stage of compression (at engineering strains of 0.2), entailing as a rule a large orientation spread within the initially uniformly oriented sample. A non-zero friction has a stabilizing effect on the course of the compression test even in cases where strong orientation changes occur. The evolution of orientation changes during compression is in part due to rigid body rotations (shape inclination due to buckling) rather than exclusively to crystallographic reorientation. Orientations that are crystallographically unstable and non-symmetric during compression tend to entail shape instability of the pillars at an earlier stage than observed for more stable cases.