A modified Johnson-Cook constitutive relationship for a rare-earth containing magnesium alloy

Lightweight magnesium alloy has recently attracted a considerable interest in the automotive and aerospace industries to improve fuel efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions via the weight reduction of vehicles. Rare-earth (RE) element addition can remarkably improve the mechanical properties of magnesium alloys through weakening crystallographic textures associated with the strong mechanical anisotropy and tension-compression yield asymmetry. While the addition of RE elements sheds some light on the alteration in the mechanical anisotropy, available information on the constitutive relationships used to describe the flow behavior of RE-containing magnesium alloys is limited. To establish such a constitutive relationship, uniaxial compressive deformation tests were first conducted on an extruded Mg-10Gd-3Y-0.5Zr (GW103K) magnesium alloy at the strain rates ranging from 1×10−1 to 1×10−4 s−1 at room temperature. A modified Johnson-Cook constitutive equation based on a recent strain hardening equation was proposed to predict the flow stresses of GW103K alloy. Comparisons between the predicted and experimental results showed that the modified Johnson-Cook constitutive equation was able to predict the flow stresses of the RE-containing magnesium alloy fairly accurately with a standard deviation of about 1.8%.