Effects of pressure-sensitive yielding on stress distributions in crankshaft sections under fillet rolling and bending fatigue tests

In this paper, the evolution equation for the active yield surface during the unloading/reloading process based on the Drucker–Prager yield function and a recently developed anisotropic hardening rule is first presented. A user material subroutine based on the anisotropic hardening rule and the constitutive relation was written and implemented into the commercial finite element program ABAQUS. Computations were first conducted for a simple plane strain finite element model under uniaxial monotonic and cyclic loading conditions. The results indicate that the anisotropic hardening rule with the non-associated flow rule describes well the strength-differential effect and the asymmetric closed hysteresis loops as observed in the uniaxial cyclic loading tests of cast irons. Then, a two-dimensional plane strain finite element analysis of a crankshaft section under fillet rolling and subsequent bending was conducted. For the pressure sensitivity corresponding to the cast iron crankshaft of interest, the critical locations for fatigue crack initiation according to the stress distributions for pressure-sensitive materials agree with the experimental observations in bending fatigue tests of crankshaft sections.