Factors contributing to plastic strain amplification in slip dominated deformation of magnesium alloys

While plastic strains are never distributed uniformly in polycrystals, it has recently been shown experimentally that the distribution can be extremely heterogeneous in magnesium polycrystals even when the deformation is dominated by slip. Here, we attempt to provide insight into the (macroscopic) factors that contribute to this strain amplification and to explain, from a local perspective, the origins of this strain amplification. To do this, full field VPFFT crystal plasticity simulations have been performed under the simplifying assumption that twinning is inoperative. It is shown that the experimentally observed heterogeneity can be reproduced when a sufficiently high anisotropy in slip system strength is assumed. This can be further accentuated by a weakening of the texture.