Prediction of Cyclic Stress–Strain Property of Steels by Crystal Plasticity Simulations and Machine Learning

In this study, a method for the prediction of cyclic stress–strain properties of ferrite-pearlite steels was proposed. At first, synthetic microstructures were generated based on an anisotropic tessellation from the results of electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) analyses. Low-cycle fatigue experiments under strain-controlled conditions were conducted in order to calibrate material property parameters for both an anisotropic crystal plasticity and an isotropic J(2) model. Numerical finite element simulations were conducted using these synthetic microstructures and material properties based on experimental results, and cyclic stress-strain properties were calculated. Then, two-point correlations of synthetic microstructures were calculated to quantify the microstructures. The microstructure-property dataset was obtained by associating a two-point correlation and calculated cyclic stress-strain property. Machine learning, such as a linear regression model and neural network, was conducted using the dataset. Finally, cyclic stress-strain properties were predicted from the result of EBSD analysis using the obtained machine learning model and were compared with the results of the low-cycle fatigue experiments.