Zinc-based coatings are widely used for protection against corrosion of steel-sheet products in the automotive industry. The objective of the present article is to investigate the deformation modes at work in three different microstructures of a thin (8 mum) zinc coating on an interstitial-free steel substrate under tension, plane-strain tension, and expansion loading. Damage mechanisms are addressed in a companion article. The plastic slip and twinning activity in the zinc grains of an untempered cold-rolled coating (labeled NSK), a tempered cold-rolled coating (labeled SK), and a recrystallized coating are compared with the response of the corresponding bulk low-alloyed zinc material. The in-plane grain size in the NSK and SK coatings ranges from 300 to 600 mum, vs about 30 mum in the recrystallized coating and bulk material. The coatings exhibit a strong crystallographic texture, with the c-axis generally normal to the sheet plane. Basal slip is shown to be the main deformation mechanism in bulk zinc and the recrystallized coating, whereas pyramidal pi 2 slip and mechanical twinning are found to be major modes in the NSK and SK coatings. These results, obtained from an extensive, quantitative slip-line analysis combined with electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) measurements, are explained by the constraining effect of the substrate. This effect is successfully modeled using a simple Taylor-like polycrystalline approach. The recrystallized coating behaves much like the bulk material. The interpretation of this grain-size effect between the NSK and SK coating, on the one hand, and the recrystallized coating, on the other hand, requires a full three-dimensional finite-element analysis of the multicrystalline coating provided in this work. The simulations show that strong strain gradients can develop in the recrystallized coating from the interface to the surface, which is not the case in the NSK and SK coatings.
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