A Combined Experimental and Numerical Calibration Approach for Modeling the Performance of Aerospace-Grade Titanium Alloy Products

Abstract

Finite element modeling for designing and optimizing lightweight titanium aerospace components requires advanced simulation tools with adequate material modeling. In this sense, a hybrid strategy is proposed in this work to identify the parameters of the Johnson–Cook plasticity and damage laws using a combined direct-inverse method. A direct calibration method for plasticity law is applied based on the literature-reported data of strain-stress curves from experimental tensile tests at different temperatures and strain rates. The triaxiliaty-dependent fracture parameters of the Johnson–Cook damage law at reference conditions of strain rate and temperature (d1, d2, and d3) are calibrated with the direct method based on new data of experimental evolution of computed average fracture strain with the average stress triaxiality. The validation is performed with numerical results from an accurate micromechanics-based Ti64 model. The inverse calibration method is used to determine the strain rate and temperature-dependent damage parameters (d4 and d5) through large strain simulations of uniaxial tensile tests. The numerical results, including average strain and necking profile at fracture, are then utilized to calculate stress triaxiality by the Bridgman criterion for adjusting parameters d4 and d5. The calibrated model yields a 2.1% error for plasticity and 3.4% for fracture predictions. The experimental and simulated load-bearing capacity using the micromechanics damage model differed by only 1%. This demonstrates that the SC11–TNT model of Ti64 is reliable for identifying the Johnson–Cook damage law through the accurate use of inverse methods. The hybrid calibration strategy demonstrates the potential capability of the identified Johnson–Cook model to accurately predict the design load-carrying capacity of Ti64 aerospace components under different deformation rates and temperatures while accounting for material damage effects.