Constitutive modelling of the high strain rate behaviour of interstitial-free steel

A physically based modelling and experimental investigation of the work hardening behaviour of IF steel covering a wide range of strain rates including complex strain path and/or strain rate changes are presented. In order to obtain isothermal stress–strain curves at high strain rates, a procedure has been proposed with the aid of finite element analysis. The result reveals that the apparent excess of the flow stress after a jump in strain rate, which is frequently observed in bcc metals, is in fact due to the thermal softening at large strains, and that the flow stress after a jump in strain rate tends asymptotically to the values corresponding to the curve at the new strain rate. The strain rate affects not only the short-range stress but also the long-range stress via the strain-rate dependant evolution of dislocation structures. The proposed model is based on the dislocation model of intragranular hardening proposed by Teodosiu and Hu Teodosiu, C., Hu, Z., 1995. Evolution of the intragranular microstructure at moderate and large strains: modelling and computational significance. In: Shen, S., Dawson, P. R., (Eds.), Proceedings of Numiform'95 on Simulation of Materials Processing: Theory, Methods and Applications. Balkema, Rotterdam, pp. 173–182] and extended to strain rate sensitive one with applying the results of the thermal activation analysis. A satisfactory agreement has been achieved between model predictions and experimental results.