Shear band spacing in thermoviscoplastic materials

A closed-form expression for shear band spacing in strain-hardening, strain-rate-hardening and thermally softening thermoviscoplastic materials is derived by studying the stability of a homogeneous solution of equations governing its simple shearing deformations. The wavelength of the perturbation that maximizes its initial growth rate is assumed to determine the shear band spacing, image. The dependence of image upon various material parameters and the nominal strain rate, image, is delineated. When written as image or image where image and image are parameters and k is the thermal conductivity, it is found that image and image depends upon the strain-rate hardening exponent m; image for image and image, decreases rapidly to image for image and image, and then increases slowly to image for image and image. However, for image and image, image.