Experimental determination of strain-induced anisotropy during nonproportional straining of an A1/Mg alloy at room temperature

Abstract

A servohydraulic, computer controlled MTSn axial-torsion testing machine with a bi-axial clip-on extensometer is used to test thin-walled tubes of an A1/Mg alloy under strain control. A plastic offset strain of 10−4 determines the yield surfaces. Straining and yield surface probing is governed by a computer program which also controls digital data acquisition. Yield surfaces in stress and in strain space as well as the axial and shear stress-strain diagrams can be reconstructed from the digitally recorded data. The specimens were subjected to a strain path in the form of a regular 16-sided polygon which was followed on some specimens by a square path. The total inelastic strain path length can exceed 15% while the equivalent strain excursion is less than 2%. It is shown that yield surfaces measured on specimens withclose initial stress-strain diagrams are very consistent and that yield surface probing has an insignificant effect on subsequent yield surfaces. Yield surfaces are shown to translate, changein shape and size and to exhibit a cross effect. A post processor which includes a least square smoothing routine calculates the area and the centroid of each yield surface. The size increase is initially rapid but the rate of increase decreases as a saturation is approached. After strining for less than 1% in a fixed direction a characteristic yield surface shape is established. Yield surfaces obtained at the same point in strain space with identical prestrain direction of at least 1% but with increased amounts of accumulated plastic strain have the same shape but show an increase in size. The yield surfaces differ in shape and size when the same strain point is reached from different directions. The centroid of the yield surface in stress space moves almost in a circular path for a polygonal strain path. All stress space yield surfaces contain the origin but this is not the case for the surfaces in strain space.