Abstract
Elasto-plastic finite elements (FE) methods are nowadays widely used to simulate complex metal forming processes. It is then useful to generate an anisotropic yield criterion from the crystallographic texture and incorporate it into such model. The theory of dual plastic potentials (one in strain rate space and one in stress space) helps to achieve this. There is however a certain danger of losing the convexity of the yield locus during this procedure. Examples of this phenomenon are given and discussed. It is furthermore explained how the yield locus can be used to generate an elasto-plastic modulus for implementation in the FE code. Finally several examples of successful applications of the anisotropic FE code to metal forming problems are given.