Constitutive equations for hot-working of metals

Elevated temperature deformation processing - “hot-working,” is an important step during the manufacturing of most metal products. Central to any successful analysis of a hot-working process is the use of appropriate rate and temperature-dependent constitutive equations for large, interrupted inelastic deformations, which can faithfully account for strain-hardening, the restoration processes of recovery and recrystallization and strain rate and temperature history effects. In this paper we develop a set of phenomenological, internal variable type constitutive equations describing the elevated temperature deformation of metals. We use a scalar and a symmetric, traceless, second-order tensor as internal variables which, in an average sense, represent an isotropic and an anisotropic resistance to plastic flow offered by the internal state of the material. In this theory, we consider small elastic stretches but large plastic deformations (within the limits of texturing) of isotropic materials. Special cases (within the constitutive framework developed here) which should be suitable for analyzing hot-working processes are indicated.