An Enhanced Viscoplastic Constitutive Model for Semi-Solid Materials to Analyze Shear Localization

Semi-solid materials undergo strain localization and shear band formation as a result of granular nature of semi-solid deformation. In the present study, to analyze the shear localization, a unified viscoplastic constitutive model was developed for the homogeneous flow. Then, a linearized analysis of the stability performed by examining the necessary condition for the perturbation growth. For this purpose, a shear layer model was considered to analyze the perturbation growth and subsequent instability. The perturbation analysis revealed that the failure mode in semi-solid materials is diffused with long wave length regime, rather than to be localized and exhibiting short wave length regime. Moreover, decreasing the solid skeleton has a retarding effect on the perturbation growth and localization at low and modest strain rates. The performed analysis showed that the localization analysis results in a new interpretation for the micro-mechanisms of the semi-solid deformation. The constitutive model was fairly well correlated with the experimental results.