Analytical tutorial

Isotropic and kinematic hardening

From the behaviour discussed in section 2, one can observe that if you plastically deform a
solid, then unload it, and then try to re-load it so as to induce further plastic flow, its resistance
to plastic flow will have increased i.e. its yield point/elastic limit increases (meaning plastic flow
begins at a higher stress than in the preceeding cycle- so we say the resistance to plastic flow
increases]. This is known as 'strain hardening'.

There are different ways of modelling strain hardening for a finite element material model.
Discussed below are the two simplest approaches:

Isotropic hardening.
Kinematic hardening.
Isotropic hardening

For isotropic hardening, if you plastically deform a solid, then unload it, then try to reload it
again, you will find that its yield stress (or elastic limit) would have increased compared to what
it was in the first cycle.

Again, when the solid is unloaded and reloaded, yield stress (or elastic limit) further increases.
[as long as it is reloaded past its previously reached maximum stress]. This continues until a
stage (or a cycle) is reached that the solid deforms elastically throughout [that is, if the cycles of
load are always to the same level, then after just one cycle your specimen on subsequent
cycles will just be loading and unloading along the elastic line of the stress strain curve].This is
isotropic hardening.

Essentially, isotropic hardening just means if you load something in tension past yield, when
you unload it, then load it in compression, it will not yield in compression until it reaches the
level past yield that you reached when loading it in tension. In other words if the yield stress in
tension increases due to hardening the compression yield stress grows the same amount even
though you might not have been loading the speciment in compression.

It is a type of hardening used in mathematical models for finite element analysis to describe
plasticity. though it is not absolutely correct for real materials.