The Influence of Crystallographic Orientation and Grain Boundary on Nanoindentation Behavior of Inconel 718 Superalloy Based on Crystal Plasticity Theory

Abstract The crystal plasticity finite element method (CPFEM) is widely used to explore the microscopic mechanical behavior of materials and understand the deformation mechanism at the grain-level. However, few CPFEM simulation studies have been carried out to analyze the nanoindentation deformation mechanism of polycrystalline materials at the microscale level. In this study, a three-dimensional CPFEM-based nanoindentation simulation is performed on an Inconel 718 polycrystalline material to examine the influence of different crystallographic parameters on nanoindentation behavior. A representative volume element model is developed to calibrate the crystal plastic constitutive parameters by comparing the stress-strain data with the experimental results. The indentation force-displacement curves, stress distributions, and pile-up patterns are obtained by CPFEM simulation. The results show that the crystallographic orientation and grain boundary have little influence on the force-displacement curves of the nanoindentation, but significantly influence the local stress distributions and shape of the pile-up patterns. As the difference in crystallographic orientation between grains increases, changes in the pile-up patterns and stress distributions caused by this effect become more significant. In addition, the simulation results reveal that the existence of grain boundaries affects the continuity of the stress distribution. The obstruction on the continuity of stress distribution increases as the grain boundary angle increases. This research demonstrates that the proposed CPFEM model can well describe the microscopic compressive deformation behaviors of Inconel 718 under nanoindentation.