Calibration of Constitutive Law and Ductile Failure Criterion for Very Thin Rectangular Al2024-T3 Aluminum Alloy Specimen

Abstract

Thin plate structures are common in many industrial products and in particular they can be found as skins in sandwich panels. In order to develop complex FE analysis which involve the damage of these structures, it’s crucial the knowledge of constitutive law and damage criterion of the material they are made. In this paper a complete characterization of both constitutive material law and damage criterion for very thin rectangular Al2024-T3 aluminum alloy specimen plate has been done. The specimens have been cut, using a water jet machine, directly from sandwich panel skins in order to take into account the modification of mechanical behavior due to the manufacturing process. A complete experimental campaign of tensile tests has been done and an accurate virtual testing methodology has been subsequently applied (by means on Finite Element Models) in order to numerically reproduce the tests. The calibration of a fitted constitutive law and of three ductile failure criteria allows the numerical model to reproduce the experimental tests with good agreement up to failure.