An advancement in cyclic plasticity modeling for multiaxial ratcheting simulation

In a search for a constitutive model for ratcheting simulations, the models by Chaboche, Ohno–Wang, McDowell, Jiang–Sehitoglu, Voyiadjis–Basuroychowdhury and AbdelKarim–Ohno are evaluated against a set of uniaxial and biaxial ratcheting responses. With the assumption of invariant shape of the yield surface during plastic loading, the ratcheting simulations for uniaxial loading are primarily a function of the plastic modulus calculation, whereas the simulations for multiaxial loading are sensitive to the kinematic hardening rule of a model. This characteristic of the above mentioned models is elaborated in this paper. It is demonstrated that if all parameters of the kinematic hardening rule are determined from uniaxial responses only, these parameters primarily enable a better plastic modulus calculation. However, in this case the role of the kinematic hardening rule in representing the ratcheting responses for multiaxial loading is under-appreciated. This realization motivated many researchers to incorporate multiaxial load dependent terms or parameters into the kinematic hardening rule. This paper evaluates some of these modified rules and finds that none is general enough to simulate the ratcheting responses consistently for the experiments considered. A modified kinematic hardening rule is proposed using the idea of Delobelle and his co-workers in the framework of the Chaboche model. This new rule introduces only one multiaxial load dependent parameter to the Chaboche model, but performs the best in simulating all the ratcheting responses considered.