Towards a Direct Consideration of Microstructure Deformation during Dynamic Recrystallisation Simulations with the Use of Coupled Random Cellular Automata—Finite Element Model

Dynamic recrystallisation (DRX) is one of the fundamental phenomena in materials science, significantly impacting the microstructure and mechanical properties of components subjected to large plastic deformations. Experimental research on that topic carried out for a wide range of new metallic materials is often supported by computational materials science. A direct consideration and detailed understanding of this phenomenon are possible with a class of full-field numerical models based on the cellular automata (CA) method. However, the classical CA approach is based on a regular, fixed computational space and has limitations in capturing large deformations of the computational domain. Therefore, the main goal of the work is to develop and implement an alternative solution to overcome this limitation. The proposed solution is based on coupling the finite element (FE) method with the random cellular automata (RCA) approach. Such a model can directly consider the influence of geometrical changes in microstructure during large plastic deformation on recrystallisation progress. Details of the developed RCA DRX model assumptions and coupling issues with FE mesh are discussed. Particular attention is also paid to increasing model efficiency and robustness studies.