It is well known that a specimen for impact testing must be optimized in terms of its dimensions. The main reason is to reduce strain gradients due to the effects of elastic plastic wave propagation. On the other hand, when a split Hopkinson bar in tension is applied, the net displacement of the specimen ends is very limited, usually from 2.0 to 3.0 mm. Thus, to reach a maximum strain of 0.5 the specimen length must be reduced in dimensions from 4.0 to 6.0 mm. Consequently, small diameters or lateral dimensions and lengths must be applied to assure one dimensional deformation. Such small lengths substantially perturb the determination of real material behavior. So the main motivation of this study was to perform a systematic analysis, numerical and analytical, to find differences in the behavior of short and long specimens loaded in impact tension. The finite element code ABAQUS/Explicit has been used to simulate several spec imen lengths from 10 to 40 mm submitted to impact velocities ranging from 10 to 100 m/s.Keywords: Constitutive relation; Dynamic tension; Normalization; Plastic instability; Numerical simulations
Thermoviscoplastic modelingTo study the dynamic processes of plastic deformation in sheet metals, a well defined constitutive relation has earlier been proposed. Several processes of fast deformation have been previously studied by applying that relation: perforation [1], double shear by direct impact [2], the Taylor test and fast tension test [3]. With the constitutive relation, Eq. (1), the effect of temperature and strain rate on the flow stress can be studied and analyzed. It is clear that the adiabatic increase of temperature has a substantial effect on the flow stress and it induces a decrease in the ultimate tensile stress. In order to describe precisely the behavior of materials at high strain rates and temperatures, the equivalent stress r needs to be taken as the sum of two components r l and r * which are, respectively, the internal and the effective stress. The first component is directly related to the strain hardening of the material and the second defines the contribution due to the thermal activation (a combination of temperature and strain rate). The constitutive relation can be written in terms of equivalent scalar quantities:where e p is the equivalent plastic strain, T is the absolute temperature, E 0 is the YoungÕs modulus at T 0 K and E(T) is the evolution of the modulus as a function of temperature. Eq. (1) is based to some extent on physical considerations [2]. The explicit expressions for both stress components are given below:where Bð _ e p ; T Þ and nð _ e p ; T Þ are the modulus of plasticity and the strain hardening exponent, respectively. These quantities, defined by Eqs. (3) and (5), respectively, take into account the experimental observations that the strain hardening itself depends on temperature and strain rate.