A viscoplastic constitutive model with effect of aging

It is recognized experimentally that differences in plastic flow stress due to the change in strain rate of SUS304 stainless steel are found to decrease after cyclic preloadings, but minimal change is observed in relaxation properties. Therefore, viscosity function based on tensile stress–strain properties differs from that obtained from relaxation behavior. For such case, the existing visco-plastic constitutive concept, such as the so-called overstress model where only viscosity is taken into consideration, has a poor capability in predicting the time-dependent mechanical properties systematically. A new viscoplastic constitutive concept is presented to analyze the phenomenon. In the constitutive concept, the dynamic strain aging even at room temperature, as well as viscosity, are introduced as the dominant factors of the time-dependent plastic deformation. An experimental technique is proposed and some experimental results are presented to estimate the effects of aging and viscosity separately on the time-dependency of a SCM435 low alloyed steel under tensile loading. The proposed constitutive model with aging is verified for the systematical predictions of both plastic flow properties and relaxation behavior of the SCM435 low alloyed steel.