On the modelling of strain ageing in a metastable austenitic stainless steel

The plastic hardening of metastable austenitic stainless steel is partly governed by martensitic transformation, the occurrence of serrated plastic flow, and plastic strain ageing phenomena. In this paper an elasto-viscoplastic material model with isotropic distortional plastic hardening is developed. The model accounts for static and dynamic strain ageing as well as the martensitic transformation. An experimental programme has been conducted in order to fit the model parameters to an austenitic stainless steel within the EN 1.4310 standard. The identification of the dynamic strain ageing was based on so called jump tests, where a sudden strain rate increase was shown to result in an instantaneous positive strain rate sensitivity followed by negative steady state strain rate sensitivity. Furthermore, the static strain ageing was identified by unloading tensile test specimens at specified plastic strains and then reloading these specimens after different periods of time. The observed material behaviour in the test situations can be predicted by the developed model. Lastly, the model was validated by predicting the force–displacement relation of the material in a shear test; the prediction agrees well with experimental results.