Anisotropic hardening equations derived from reverse-bend testing

The plastic response of materials during reverse loading has practical consequences for common sheet forming operations in terms of loads, localization behavior, and springback. However, it is difficult to measure the reverse loading (Bauschinger effect) in sheet materials because of their propensity to buckle. A simple reverse-bend test was constructed and used to investigate the cyclic loading of three automotive body alloys. The results showed that consideration of the Bauschinger effect is essential to obtaining agreement with such results. An inverse procedure was used to determine anisotropic hardening law parameters. Laws obtained in this way were compared with ones generated by more sensitive tension-compression tests appearing in the literature for the same alloys. The two laws were significantly different, but both produced accurate simulations of reverse-bend test load–displacement curves. Several artificial material models were then constructed to simulate the reverse-bend test and thus to probe its sensitivity to material constitutive equation details. For materials whose reverse-loading response varies with the level of prestrain, as is the case for each of the three alloys tested, a wide range of constitutive response is capable of producing identical reverse-bending behavior. The results show that inverse procedures applied to the reverse-bend test do not provide unique results, and thus the usefulness of the reverse-bend test for such investigations is limited.