Study of plastic/viscoplastic models with various inelastic mechanisms

This paper describes a general framework for the development of plastic or viscoplastic constitutive equations. As the applications are focused on cyclic loadings, only small strains are considered, with an additive decomposition of the total strain into a thermo-elastic part, and several inelastic parts, the evolution of which is determined by several plastic or viscoplastic criteria. Quadratic or linear (crystallographic) criteria could be used, so that the approach is able to describe the contribution of several physical levels, or deformation mechanism, to the inelastic behavior. The present work is restricted to the case of quadratic criteria, and specially to the study of the various interactions which can be introduced between the mechanisms. The most important case is the coupling between kinematic hardening variables which allows to describe: (1) either normal rate sensitivity or inverse rate sensitivity; (2) plasticity-creep interaction; (3) ratcheting for high mean stress but either adaptation or plastic shakedown for lower mean stress.