Predicting deformation-induced polymer–steel interface roughening and failure

•Numerical assessment of deformation-induced polymer–steel interface roughening.•Crystal plasticity is combined with cohesive zone interface model and the Eindhoven Glassy Polymer model.•Uniaxial tension simulations show formation of hills and valleys on the steel surface due to the introduced texture.•The steel roughness grows with deformation resulting in local interface failure.•The roughness increases more rapidly and a different pattern emerges with deformation in compression which increases the predicted interface failure.

A novel integrated framework is presented for the prediction of deformation-induced interface roughening and failure in polymer-coated steels. Crystal plasticity is employed to predict the change in steel surface roughness in-situ. The steel substrate is coated with a thin polymer layer and the polymer–steel interface is modeled using an exponential cohesive zone law. Uniaxial tensile simulations are performed and the results show that the predicted roughness increases with the applied deformation. The local changes in the steel surface profile result in initiation and growth of local interface failure. Furthermore, a compression simulation shows that the roughening rate of the steel is increased compared to tension, with an increase in the predicted interface damage as a result. The presented framework thus allows for a detailed numerical study of the initiation and growth of interface damage in polymer-coated steels during applied deformation. The incorporation of the crystal plasticity model to predict the changes in the steel surface profile complements the cumbersome measurements of detailed experimental displacement fields that accompany deformation-induced roughening and thus enables the analysis of deformation processes where measuring the steel surface profile is difficult if not impossible, e.g. industrial forming processes such as deep-drawing.