International Journal of Steel Structures 17(1): 127-137 (2017)

DOI 10.1007/s13296-016-0122-8
ISSN 1598-2351 (Print)
ISSN 2093-6311 (Online)

www.springer.com/journal/13296

Constitutive Model of Q345 Steel at Different

Intermediate Strain Rates
Junling Chen1,*, Wenya Shu2, and Jinwei Li2
1
Associate professor, Department of Structural Engineering, Tongji Uni., Shanghai 200092, China
2
Master Student, Department of Structural Engineering, Tongji Uni., Shanghai 200092, China

Abstract

Structural elements of steel frame experience very high strain rates in the progressive collapse, and hence their constitutive
properties do not remain constant but change significantly with time. Quasi-static and dynamic tensile tests of Q345 steel were
performed to study the dynamic tensile behavior within the range of 0.001 to 330/s strain rates by INSTRON and Zwick/Roell
HTM5020 testing machine. A three dimensional finite element model is developed using LS-DYNA to extrapolate the true
stress-strain relationship after necking of Q345 steel. The hardening behavior of Q345 steel after the onset of necking is
predicted with the Ludwik constitutive equation at quasi-static strain rates and with the Voce constitutive equation at higher
strain rates, in which the strain hardening parameters are obtained by trial and error until the numerical results agree well with
the experimental results. The linear combination of Hollomon and Voce (H/V-R) model is proved to be capable of predicting
the transition of hardening rate with the increasing strain rate for Q345 steel although there is a little deviation between the
experimental and fitting results. In this study, an empirical constitutive model is developed by introducing the Wagoner rate
law into the H/V-R model to improve its precision in predicting the dynamic behavior of Q345 steel.

Keywords: progressive collapse, steel frame, strain rate, constitutive model, Q345

1. Introduction hydraulic testing machines is usually used to conduct the

Progressive collapse of building structures is usually
initiated by the local failure resulting from an abnormal
and impulsive loading, which is characterized by rapid
change and high intensity, such as explosions and impacts.
Under these loads, structural elements experience very
high strain rates, and hence their constitutive properties
do not remain constant but change significantly with time.
Many researchers have focused on the study of steel
properties under impulsive loading conditions in the
automotive industries, munitions or gravity-dropped weapons
since the strain rate has an obvious influence on both the
plastic flow stresses and the ductility of materials. To
measure the dynamic response of materials, various types
of testing methods have been proposed according to the
strain-rate range. The tensile split Hopkinson bar setup is
often employed to study the mechanical behaviors of
steels in the high strain rate exceed 102/s, while the
Received April 7, 2016; accepted July 25, 2016;
published online March 31, 2017
© KSSC and Springer 2017
*Corresponding author
Tel: +86-2165981917
E-mail: chenjl@tongji.edu.cn
tensile tests of steels at intermediate strain rates. Boyce et
al. (2009) employed a dynamic servohydraulic method to
perform tensile tests of four high-strength and high-
toughness steels at strain rates ranging from 0.0002 to
200 s−1. Khan et al. (2012) investigated the quasi-static
and dynamic responses of advanced high-strength steels,
including TRIP800 and DP800 using the modified tensile
split Hopkinson pressure bar over arange of strain rates
from 10−4 s−1 to 103 s−1. Sato et al. (2015) performed
dynamic tensile tests to investigate the strain-rate effects
on the necking and fracture behavior of high-strength
steels for automotive structures by Hopkinson bar method.
More recently, the progressive collapse resistance of
steel frame structures are mainly evaluated by numerical
simulation (Khandelwal et al., 2009; Chen et al., 2012).
Therefore, the dynamic constitutive model of structural
steels under impulsive loading conditions is indispensable
for predicting the progressive collapse resistance of steel
frame structures more accurately. This means that the true
stress-logarithmic strain curve is essential because the
large strain problem should be considered in the analysis
of progressive collapse resistance. In a steel specimen
uniaxial tension test, plastic instability and flow localization
will occur after the maximum load and the diffuse
necking starts. The distribution of stresses and strains
128 Junling Chen et al. / International Journal of Steel Structures, 17(1), 127-137, 2017
becomes complex and changes gradually from the simple
uniaxial tension to the complicated triaxial condition.
Therefore, it is difficult to determine the true stress-strain
relationship as the stress distribution and deformation
field in the neck is not uniform. Many studies have
focused on deriving the true stress-strain relationship
after necking. Bridgman (1952) derived the analytical
solution of true stress correction from the tensile specimen
with a round cross section. However, this solution does
not work for a rectangular specimen because it is grounded
on the assumption of an axisymmetric stress and strain
field with constant plastic strain in the smallest necking
section. Zhang et al. (1999) carried out an extensive
three-dimensional numerical study on the diffuse necking
behaviour of tensile specimens with rectangular cross
section and established an approximate relation between
the area reduction of the minimum cross section and the
measured thickness reduction. Based on the finite element
analyses, Joun et al. (2008) acquired the true stress-strain
curves at large strains by coupling experiments with an
analysis based on a tensile test and a rigid-plastic finite
element method. Dunand and Mohr (2010) extrapolated
the true stress-strain relation during the necking by two
segments of lines with different tangent modulus, which
were determined by the numerical inverse analyses of the
experimental results.
In the development of material constitutive models, the
main researches focused on the description of work-
hardening behavior of materials at different strains, strain
rates, and temperatures. The Cowper-Symonds model
(Cowper and Symonds, 1957) and the Johnson-Cook
model (Johnson and Cook, 1983) were widely applied to
relate the plastic flow stress with strain and strain rate due
to their simple expressions for engineering application.
However, these two models consider the strain hardening
and strain-rate sensitivity independently, and thus cannot
describe the rate-dependent hardening characteristics of
the steel. The Khan-Liang model (Khan and Liang 1999),
the modified Khan-Huang-Liang model (Huh et al. 2012),
the modified Cowper-Symonds model (Choung, 2013)
and the H/V-R model (Kim et al., 2013) could accommodate
the change of strain hardening character with the increasing
strain rate. Yu et al. (2010) developed the modified
Johnson-Cook model to consider the temperature dependent
hardening characteristics of Q345 steel.
Q345 is a low alloy structural steel and extensively
used in buildings, bridges and machine manufacturing in
China. Yu et al. (2010) conducted an impact-experiment
by Split-Hopkinson pressure bar to investigate its dynamic
behaviors at the elevated temperatures and high strain
rates (500-4000/s). However, the strain rate of building
structures subjected to the earthquake, impact, blast and
other extreme dynamic loading conditions is usually in
the range of 10−2/s~103/s. The insufficient studies on the
dynamic tensile behaviors of Q345 steel have restricted
the strain dependent analysis of progressive collapse
Table 1. Chemical composition of Q345 steel
Element C Mn P S Si
Mass (%) 0.16 1.28 0.025 0.011 0.19
Figure 1. Details of tensile specimens (Unit: mm).
resistance. In this paper, the uniaxial tension tests were
carried out to investigate the dynamic mechanical properties
of Q345 steel over a range of strain rates from 0.001/s to
330/s. The true stress-strain curves after the onset of
necking and under different strain rates of Q345 steel are
determined by adopting the hybrid experimental-numerical
inverse method. The plastic constitutive model based on
the true stress-strain relations is established by modifying
the existing H/V-R model and then is proved to be capable
of providing a well representation on the hardening effect
and rate sensitivity of Q345 steel at a wide range of strains
and strain rates.
2. Experiments
2.1. Materials and specimen preparation
All specimens used in this study were cut from the
same commercial sheet with 3 mm thickness and their
length direction is along the rolling direction. The chemical
composition of Q345 steel is shown in Table 1. The
geometry of quasi-static (EN ISO 6892-1 2009) and
dynamic specimens (ISO 26203-2 2011) are shown in
Fig. 1.
2.2. Test equipment and setup
All the quasi-static tensile tests were performed on an
INSTRON machine with a load capacity of 200 kN at the
nominal strain rate of 10−3 /s. A mechanical clip-on
extensometer with a gauge length of 50 mm was employed
to measure the extension. All the dynamic tests were
performed on Zwick/Roell HTM5020 hydraulic testing
machine (Fig. 2), which has a load capacity of 50 kN and
can develop a control velocity in the range of 1×10−3 to
20 m/s. The lower part of the specimen was fully clamped
 Constitutive Model of Q345 Steel at Different Intermediate Strain Rates 129

Figure 4. Comparison of the force signals captured by

Figure 2. HTM5020 machine setup for dynamic tensile Piezo-load cell and strain gauge.
tests.

in Fig. 4, from which it can be seen that the force

oscillations can be significantly reduced by this dynamo-
metric procedure in the high strain rate test.

Figure 3. Photo of specimen with strain gauges. 2.3. Test results

in the static grip and a fast jaw was used to grip the
moving side of the specimen. Dynamic tests were carried
out at 0.002, 0.1, 0.6, 2.0, 3.2 and 6.8 m/s tensile speed
corresponding to the nominal strain rates of 0.1, 5, 30,
100, 160 and 340/s, respectively. The elongation of the
original gauge length was measured with the help of the
high-speed video camera. The force cannot be accurately
obtained from the piezo-electric load cell when the strain
rate is greater than 50/s due to the oscillations in force
signals. Two strain gauges were mounted on both sides of
the wider section in the specimen to create a transducer
with a high frequency response and measure the force
near the gauge length (Wood et al. 2009), as shown in
Fig. 3. The type of strain gauge used in the tests is
BF120-3AA, and its resistance is 119.8 Ω. The static
calibration of high frequency force transducer was
performed to establish the relationship between the strain
measurement and the force applied to the specimen prior
to the strain rate test. The sensitivity of load cell is 2.1%
and the gauge factor is 0.0564. A sample curve is shown
The key information of all specimens are listed in Table
2. Each group of strain rate contains three identical
specimens to ensure repeatability. For each specimen, the
thickness and width were measured three times at different
locations within the gauge length, and their average values
are used to calculate the cross-sectional area. Pictures in
the parallel segment are taken by high speed camera
during the tension test. Through data processing program,
engineering strain data are obtained from these pictures.
The strain rate is calculated from the percentage elongation
after fracture divided by the time to fracture. For each
group specimens, the stress-strain curves obtained from
the strain gauge are filtered first to eliminate the high
frequency signals and then the curve closest to the average
value of three specimens is chosen as the engineering
stress-strain curve corresponding to a certain strain rate,
as shown in Fig. 5(a). The engineering stress-strain curves
of Q345 steel at different strain rates are shown in Fig.
5(b). It should be noted that all specimens show an
evident yield plateau at various strain rates. At the end of
yield plateau, strain hardening begins with a subsequent
increase in stress.

Table 2. Summary of all the specimens

Strain rate Cross-sectional area Yield strength Ultimate tensile Elongation at the
Specimen
(s−1) (mm2) (MPa) strength (MPa) fracture stage (%)
Test1 0.001 36.62 371.7 525.7 21.33
Test2 0.1 17.84 423.1 577.9 31.40
Test3 4.7 17.81 458.7 603.5 32.62
Test4 30 17.92 481.2 631.1 35.07
Test5 72 18.13 506.3 637.4 35.24
Test6 136 18.27 540.0 662.4 36.15
Test7 330 17.22 598.5 714.8 35.72
130 Junling Chen et al. / International Journal of Steel Structures, 17(1), 127-137, 2017
Figure 5. Stress-strain curves for Q345 steel.
Both the yield strength and ultimate tensile strength of
Q345 steel increase with the increasing strain rate as
shown in Fig. 7(a). With the strain rate increasing from
0.001 to 330 s−1, the yield strength increases from 371.4
to 598.0 MPa and the ultimate tensile strength increases
from 525.7 to 714.8 MPa. It should be noted that the
engineering stress changes nonlinearly with the logarithmic
scale of the strain rate. For the uniaxial tensile tests, the
strains are supposed to be uniaxial before the onset of
necking. The necking point can be determined from the
engineering stress-strain curves and then the uniform
strain can be obtained. Figure 6(b) shows the uniform
elongation and the total elongation of Q345 steel specimens
at the different log strain rates. It should be noted that the
total elongation of the quasi-static specimen is not given
in Fig. 6(b) because of the differences of quasi-static and
dynamic specimens in geometry. However, the uniform
elongation obtained from quasi-static and dynamic tests
can be compared because the differences in geometry
have little influence on the uniform elongation of Q345
steel. From Fig. 6(b), the uniform elongation tends to stay
a constant at various strain rates although it is slightly
larger under higher strain rates. The total elongation has
an obvious increase with increasing strain rates. The test
Figure 6. Variations of engineering stress and elongations
with increasing strain rate.
results of Q345 steel are compared with those of DP600,
DP800, TRIP and ZSTE340 (Boyce and Dilmore 2009)
respectively as shown in Fig. 7, in which Q345 steel
shows good agreement with these steels in the trend of
strain rate sensitivity.
3. Development of True Stress-true Strain
Relations
The true stress-logarithmic strain curve is an essential
premise for predicting accurately the progressive collapse
resistance of steel frame structures. In a standard uniaxial
test, the specimen deforms uniformly until the maximum
load is reached, and the corresponding true stress-strain
can be determined from engineering stress-strain values
according to Eqs. (1) and (2).
σ = σeng ( 1 + εeng ) (1)
A
ε = ln ⎛ -----⎞ = ln ⎛ ----0-⎞ = ln ( 1 + εeng )
L
(2)
⎝ L0⎠ ⎝ A⎠
where σ and ε are the true stress and strain, respectively;
σeng and εeng are the engineering stress and strain,
respectively; A and L are the cross-section area and the
 Constitutive Model of Q345 Steel at Different Intermediate Strain Rates 131

start of plastic strain, n is additional material parameters

to be found.
The prediction in Eq. (3) has no upper limit on the
stress value at large strains so that σ can approach infinity
as the increasing of ε p. In fact, the experimental data have
shown that the stress level saturates at large strains in the
high strain rate tests. This apparent breakdown in the
Ludwik model can be resolved by using the Voce model.
The Voce constitutive equation implies that the flow stress
approaches exponentially to an asymptotic or saturation
value at high strains. The parameters in the constitutive
equations are determined by the similar procedure proposed
by Zhu et al. (2013). According to the Considère criterion,
the onset of necking starts when the internal force of the
specimen reaches the maximum value:
d ( σA )
= ⎛ ------- A + ------- σ⎞
dP dσ dA
------- = --------------- =0 (5)
dεp dεp ⎝ dεp dεp ⎠
εp = εu εp = εu εp = εu

where P is the internal force of the specimen and ε u is the

true plastic strain, corresponding to the maximum nominal
stress.
From Eq. (2), we can obtain the instantaneous cross-
section area of the specimen at the onset of necking
–ε – ε0 – εp
A = A0 e = A0 e (6)

where ε 0 and ε p represent the true elastic strain and

Figure 7. Strain rate sensitivity of some steels in comparison
with Q345 steel test results.
gauge length of the specimen on which elongation is
measured at any moment, respectively; A0 is the original
cross-section area of the parallel length; L0 is the original
gauge length.
Beyond the onset of necking after the maximum load,
Eqs. (1) and (2) are not available anymore because of the
inhomogeneous strain field and the triaxial stress state.
Many researchers have tried to find the empirical, semi-
empirical or physically based constitutive models to describe
the true stress-strain relationship from the onset of yielding
to the fracture. In the present investigation, the Ludwik
model (Ludwik, 1909) and the Voce law (Voce, 1948) are
widely used to express static hardening behavior, shown
in Eqs. (3) and (4) respectively.
n
Ludwik model: σ = σ0 + KL ( εp ) (3)
where σ 0 is a material constant which accounts for the
positive deviation owing to yielding at low strains, KL is
the strength coefficient, n is the strain hardening exponent.
–nεp
Voce model: σ = σs – ( σs – σi )e (4)
where σs is the saturation stress, σi is the stress at the
plastic strain respectively.
It should be noted that Eq. (6) does not hold anymore
after the initial necking. Substituting Eq. (6) into Eq. (5)
gives
dσ
------- = σu (7)
dεp
εp = εu
Let ε u be the true plastic strain at the onset of necking
and σ u be the corresponding true stress, which satisfies
Eq. (8).
σε = σu (8)
p = εu
Two equations can be established by substituting Eqs.
(7) and (8) into the Ludwik hardening model (Eq. (3)) or
the Voce hardening model (Eq. (4)). There are three
unknown parameters in these two hardening models
respectively. Once the parameter n is assumed, we can
obtain a possible true stress- strain curve representing the
hardening behavior after the necking (Fig. 8). The constant
n can be determined in a trial and error manner by
numerical simulation with an experimental tensile load-
extension curve as a target.
A three dimensional finite element model of the specimen
is developed using LS-DYNA to predict the hardening
behavior of Q345 steel and determine the constant n in
the Ludwik model (Fig. 9). Eight-node reduced-integration
solid element SOLID164 is employed in the explicit
132 Junling Chen et al. / International Journal of Steel Structures, 17(1), 127-137, 2017

Figure 8. True stress vs. strain curves by Ludwik model Figure 10. Influence of constant n at the strain rate of 0.1/s
at the strain rate of 0.1/s.
Table 3. Post-necking true stress-strain model parameters
for Q345 steel
Strain rate Hardening True stress-plastic strain Fracture
(/s) law relation after necking strain
0.25
0.001 Ludwik σ =273.20+545.55 εp 1.12
0.25
0.1 Ludwik σ =248.45+676.56 εp 1.36
–1.5 εp
4.7 Voce σ =1157.73−568.66 e 1.34
–1.4 εp
30 Voce σ =1268.66−657.68 e 1.39
–1.1 εp
72 Voce σ =1401.63−777.05 e 1.38
Figure 9. FE model of high-speed tensile specimen.
–1.3 εp
136 Voce σ =1390.30−775.13 e 1.42
–1.5 εp
solver. The piecewise linear plasticity model is used as 330 Voce σ =1429.67−746.99 e 1.41
input for the steel material definition. A finer mesh is
used for a gauge length of the middle region, where the
strain gradient is expected to be large. All nodes at the
end of the specimen fully clamped in the static grip are
fixed. A constant velocity is imposed at the other end of
the specimen.
For each test at certain strain rate, true stress-strain
curve and fracture strain are input to simulate the strain
hardening. Although the suitable hardening parameter n
for achieving quantitative agreement between numerical
and experimental tensile load-engineering strain curves
needs to be established by trial and error approach, only
a few trials are required in this study. To illustrate the
influence of the constant n, the predicted curves corres- Figure 11. True stress vs. strain at different strain rates.
ponding to three different values for n=0.15, 0.25 and 0.4
are compared with the experimental curve under the
strain rate of 0.1/s, as shown in Figure 10. It is apparent relationships after necking are presented in Table 3. The
that the predicted curve is in essentially perfect agreement true strain near the area of local necking is more than
with the corresponding experimental values when n is three times of the maximum engineering strain, and increases
equal to 0.25. quickly before fracture. So, the true strain should be large
The same simulation procedure is applied to determine enough to simulate the tensile tests. Although the fracture
the suitable hardening parameter n at other strain rates. It strains secured from numerical simulations vary from one
should be noted that the Voce model will be employed to strain rate to another, all true stress vs. strain curves are
describe the hardening effect of the steel after necking extended to the plastic strain of 1.4 for the convenience of
once the Ludwik model fails to capture the necking behavior comparison (Fig. 11). It is obvious that the hardening
of the specimen. The corresponding true stress-strain characteristics of Q345 steel change with the increasing
 Constitutive Model of Q345 Steel at Different Intermediate Strain Rates 133

Figure 12. Comparison of the engineering stress-engineering strain curves.

strain rates. The hardening mode is close to Ludwik 4. Constitutive Model

model at the low strain rate and more close to Voce model
at the high strain rate. Figure 12 shows the numerical and
experimental results at the different strain rates. It can be
seen that the simulated curve (depicted with dash line) are
in good agreement with the experimental results (depicted
with solid line). Consequently, the simulated curves can
give a valid prediction for the necking behaviors of Q345
steel at different strain rates.
Accurate determination of plasticity model capable of
predicting the flow stress of Q345 steel covering large
strains and wide ranges of strain rates is not easy because
of the coupling effects of strain hardening and strain rate.
Based on the true stress-strain relations for large strains at
different strain rates, the next target is to construct a
reliable constitutive model that represents the flow stress
134 Junling Chen et al. / International Journal of Steel Structures, 17(1), 127-137, 2017
Table 4. Material constants of Johnson-Cook model
J-C model A/MPa B/MPa n C
Parameters 371.0 452.3 0.3657 0.0331
Figure 13. Experimental data and J-C model correlation.
as the function of strain and strain rate and is easy to
implement in computer code.
4.1. Johnson-Cook Model
Johnson-Cook model (Johnson and Cook, 1983) has
been frequently used in describing the rate-dependent and
temperature-dependent constitutive behaviors due to its
simple form and easy implementation in computer code.
The true stress is represented as the function of strain rate
and temperature empirically without considering their
coupling effects (Eq. (9)).
σ = ( A + Bε ) ( 1 + Clnε∗ ) ( 1 – T∗ )
n · m
(9)
where σ is the true stress, ε is the true plastic strain,
ε∗ = ε ⁄ ε0 is the dimensionless strain rate (ε 0 is taken as
· · ·
−3
10 /s in this study), A, B, C, m and n are material
m
constants, and T∗ is the homologous temperature which
is not considered and set to zero in this study. The factor
m
1 – T∗ can be considered by the fitting of parameters A
and B.
In this model, strain hardening, strain rate hardening,
and thermal softening are expressed with a decoupled
multiplication form. The constant A is the quasi-static
yield stress, the constants B and n are the strain hardening
coefficient and exponent, respectively. The constant C is
the strain rate constant that can be obtained by fitting the
experimental data at large strains. To verify the validity of
the Johnson-Cook model on predicting the dynamic
behavior of Q345 steel under the intermediate strain rate,
the material constants in Eq. (9) are determined by fitting
the experimental data and listed in Table 4. Figure 13
shows the flow stress curves interpolated from the Johnson-
Cook model and the experimental results at different strain
rates. It is apparent that there are enormous discrepancies
between the interpolated flow stress curves and the
experimental ones. This is mainly because that the Johnson-
Cook model assumes that the flow stress is a linear
function of the natural logarithm of strain rate (Abed and
Makarem, 2012), which fails to give an accurate description
of the strain rate effect of Q345 steel as illustrated in Fig.
6(a). In addition, the Johnson-Cook model ignores the
coupled effect of strain hardening and strain rate.
Consequently, the rate-independent hardening assumption
cannot reflect the change of the hardening phenomenon
with the increasing strain rate.
4.2. Modification of H/V-R model
The true stress-strain curves of steels can be conveniently
described by the two representative laws: power-law (or
Hollomon-like (Hollomon, 1945)) and exponential (or
Voce-like (Voce, 1948)) hardening models. However,
these two models are not appropriate for an accurate
description of the stress-strain response since additional
effects such as strain rate and temperature are involved in
the hardening model. Sung et al. (2010) developed the
H/V model (for “Hollomon/Voce”) to incorporate the
temperature sensitivity of strain hardening by a linear
combination of Hollomon (power-law) and Voce (saturation)
strain-hardening forms, which can capture the transition
of hardening rate with the increaseing temperature. Here,
‘H’ and ‘V’ mean Hollomon and Voce, respectively. Kim
et al. (2013) further modified the H/V-R model (Eq. (10))
to consider the coupled effect of strain rate and hardening
rate by a linear combination of Voce and Hollomon
hardening equations.
· · · · ·
σ = f ( ε, ε ) ⋅ g ( ε ) = [ α ( ε )fH + ( 1 – α ( ε ) )fV ] ⋅ g ( ε ) (10)
· ·
α ( ε ) = α1 – α2 ln ( ε ) (11)
B
fH = Aε (12)
fV = C – Dexp ( –Eε ) (13)
·
· · · m1 + m2 lnε
g ( ε ) = ( ε ⁄ ε0 ) (14)
where α1, α2, A, B, C, D, E, m1 and m2 are the material
constants. The functions f and g represent the effects of
strain and strain rate, respectively; σ and ε denote the
true stress and
· the true plastic strain, respectively; the
function α ( ε ) allows a more Voce-like hardening curve
at higher strain rate while a more Hollomon-like hardening·
curve at lower strain rate; the reference strain rate ε0 is
taken as 10−3/s in this study.
As shown in Fig. 11, the true stress-strain relationships
of Q345 steel present the Ludwik-like (power-law)
hardening at the low strain rate and the Voce-like hardening
at the high strain rate. Therefore, it is feasible to construct
a reliable constitutive model of Q345 steel based on the
H/V-R model. The nine material constants in the H/V-R
 Constitutive Model of Q345 Steel at Different Intermediate Strain Rates 135

Table 5. H/V-R model material constants

H/V-R α1 α2 A (MPa) B C (MPa) D (MPa) E m1 m2
Q345 0.48869 0.04598 819.04 0.1378 1003.12 601.35 1.521 0.02068 0.00147

Figure 14. Experimental data and H/V-R model correlation.

Figure 15. Predicting strain rate sensitivity of Q345 steel
with Eqs. (14) and (15)

model are determined through non-linear least square

method and listed in Table 5. The true stress-true strain
curves obtained from the experiment and the H/V-R
model with the determined material parameters are shown
in Fig. 14. It is obvious that the fitted curves by the H/V-
R model agree well with the experimental ones, which
demonstrates that the linear combination of Hollomon-
like and Voce-like does predict the changes of strain
hardening with the increasing strain rate for Q345 steel.
However, it should be noted that the H/V-R model
underestimates the flow stress at the strain rates of 0.1/s
and 330/s to a certain extent and slightly overestimates
the flow stress at the strain rates of 72/s and 136/s.
Sung et al. (2010) found that both the Wagoner rate law
Figure 16. Experimental data and correlations of the H/V-
(Wagoner, 1981) (Eq. (15)) and the simplified version of R2 model.
the wagoner law (Eq. (14)) can reflect the strain rate
sensitivity of the steel and the latter one is slightly better
than the former. Therefore, the simplified version of the mental curves as shown in Fig. 16.
wagoner law is introduced into the H/V-R model. The ··
m2
·
ε ⎞ m1 ε ε0
DIF = ⎛ ---
flow stresses at different strains of Q345 steel are predicted
- (15)
with Eqs. (14) and (15) respectively (Fig. 15). It should ⎝ ε·0⎠
be noted that the Wagoner rate law performs slightly
better than the simplified version of the Wagoner law in where DIF is the dynamic increase factor of flow stress
predicting the strain rate sensitivity.
· Therefore, the strain at a certain strain and strain rate, m1 and m2 are two
rate sensitivity function g ( ε ) in the H/V-R model (Eq. material constants.
(10)) is replaced by the Wagoner rate law (Eq. (15)). The
modified H/V-R model is named as H/V-R2 hereafter and 5. Conclusions
the corresponding material parameters are given in the
Table 6. It can be seen that the fitted curves by H/V-R2 Quasi-static and dynamic tensile tests of Q345 steel
constitutive model can agree very well with the experi- with the strain rates ranging from 0.001/s to 330/s were

Table 6. H/V-R2 model material constants

H/V-R2 α1 α2 A (MPa) B C (MPa) D (MPa) E m1 m2
Q345 0.58995 0.04286 754.76 0.1367 1523.76 915.36 1.522 0.0166 0.54010
136 Junling Chen et al. / International Journal of Steel Structures, 17(1), 127-137, 2017
carried out to study the dynamic tensile behavior by
INSTRON material testing machine and Zwick/Roell
HTM5020 hydraulic testing machine. The three dimensional
finite element model of the specimen is established using
LS-DYNA to predict the hardening behavior of Q345
steel. Based on the numerical and experimental results,
the constitutive model capable of capturing the rate-
dependent hardening behavior of Q345 steel is developed
by modifying the H/V-R model. The following conclusions
can be drawn:
Both the yield stress and the ultimate tensile strength of
Q345 steel increase remarkably with the increasing strain
rate.
The Ludwik law can more accurately describe the
necking behavior of Q345 steel at the low strain rates,
while the Voce law is better suited for predicting the
tensile flow behavior at the high strain rates.
The proposed modified H/V-R model obtained by
combining Hollomon and Voce hardening law and
introducing the Wagoner rate law can effectively simulate
the rate-dependent hardening characteristic of Q345 steel.
Acknowledgment
The writers appreciate the support from the Natural
Science Foundation of China (NFSC) under Grant No.
51378381. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, and
recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the
writers and do not represent the views of the sponsor.
References
Abed, F., and Makarem, F. (2012). “Comparisons of
Constitutive Models for Steel over a Wide Range of
Temperatures and Strain Rates.” J. Eng. Mater. Technol.,
134(2), 021001.
Boyce, B. L., and Dilmore, M. F. (2009). “The dynamic
tensile behavior of tough, ultrahigh-strength steels at
strain-rates from 0.0002 s−1 to 200 s−1.” Int. J. Impact
Eng., 36(2), pp. 263-271.
Bridgman, P. W. (1952). Studies in large plastic flow and
fracture, McGraw-Hill, New York, U.S.
CEN (European Committee for Standardization). (2009).
“Metallic materials-tensile testing-Part 1: method of test
at ambient temperature.” EN ISO 6892-1, Brussels.
Chen, J. L., Peng, W. B., Ma, R. L., and He, M. J. (2012).
“Strengthening of Horizontal Bracing on Progressive
Collapse Resistance of Multistory Steel Moment Frame.”
J. Perform. Constr. Facil., 10.1061/(ASCE)CF.1943-
5509.0000261, 26(5), pp. 720-724
Choung, J., Nam, W., and Lee, J.Y. (2013). “Dynamic
hardening behaviors of various marine structural steels
considering dependencies on strain rate and temperature.”
Mar. Struct., 32, pp. 49-67.
Cowper, G. R., and Symonds, P. S. (1957). Strain-hardening
and strain-rate effects in the impact loading of cantilever
beams. Brown University, Providence RI.
Dunand, M., and Mohr, D. (2010). “Hybrid experimental-
numerical analysis of basic ductile fracture experiments
for sheet metals.” Int. J. Solids Struct., 47(9), pp. 1130-
1143.
Hollomon, J. H. (1945). “Tensile deformation.” Trans.
Metall. Soc. AIME., 162, pp. 268-290.
Huh, H., Lee, H. J., and Song, J. H. (2012). “Dynamic
hardening equation of the auto-body steel sheet with the
variation of temperature.” Int. J. Automot. Techn., 13(1),
pp. 43-60.
ISO (The International Organization for Standardization).
(2011). “Metallic material-tensile testing at high strain
rates-part2: servo-hydraulic and other test systems.” ISO
26203-2, Switzerland.
Johnson, G. R., and Cook, W. H. (1983). “A constitutive
model and data for metals subjected to large strains, high
strain rates and high temperatures.” Proc. 7th Int. Symp.
on Ballistics, International Ballistics Committee, The
Hague, Netherlands, 21, pp. 541-547.
Joun, M. S., Eom, J. G., and Lee, M. C. (2008). “A new
method for acquiring true stress-strain curves over a large
range of strains using a tensile test and finite element
method.” Mech. Mater., 40(7), pp. 586-593.
Khan, A. S., and Liang, R. Q. (1999). “Behaviors of three
BCC metal over a wide range of strain rates and
temperatures: experiments and modeling.” Int. J. Plast.,
15(10), pp. 1089-1109.
Khan, A. S., Baig, M., Choi, S. H., Yang, H. S., and Sun, X.
(2012). “Quasi-static and dynamic responses of advanced
high strength steels: experiments and modeling.” Int. J.
Plast., 30-31, pp. 1-17.
Khandelwal, K., El-Tawil, S., and Sadek, F. (2009).
“Progressive collapse analysis of seismically designed
steel braced frames.” J. Constr. Steel Res., 65(3), pp. 699-
708.
Kim, J. H., Kim, D., Han, H. N., Barlatc, F., and Lee, M. G.
(2013). “Strain rate dependent tensile behavior of advanced
high strength steels: Experiment and constitutive
modeling.” Mat. Sci. Eng., 559, pp. 222-231.
Ludwik, P. (1909). Elemente der technologischen Mechanik.
Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin.
Sato, K., Yu, Q., Hiramoto, J., Urabe, T., and Yoshitake, A.
(2015). “A method to investigate strain rate effects on
necking and fracture behaviors of advanced high-strength
steels using digital imaging strain analysis.” Int. J. Impact
Eng., 75, pp. 11-26.
Sung, J. H., Kim, J. H., and Wagoner, R. H. (2010). “A
plastic constitutive equation incorporating strain, strain-
rate, and temperature.” Int. J. Plast., 26(12), pp. 1746-
1771.
Voce, E. (1948). “The relationship between stress and strain
for homogeneous deformation.” J. Inst. Metals, 74, pp.
537-562.
Wagoner, R. H. (1981). “A new description of strain-rate
sensitivity.” Scripta Metal., 15(10), pp. 1135-1137.
Wood, K. C., Schley, C. A., Williams, M., Beaumont, R.,
Rusinek, A., Mayer, U., and Pearce, A. (2009). “A
method to calibrate a specimen with strain gauges to
measure force over the full-force range in high rate
testing.” Proc. 9th Int. Conf. on Mechanical and Physical
Behavior of Materials under Dynamic Loading, EDP
 Constitutive Model of Q345 Steel at Different Intermediate Strain Rates 137

Sciences, Paris, FRA, pp. 265-273.
Yu, W., Zhao, J., and Shi, J. (2010). “Dynamic mechanical
behaviour of Q345 steel at elevated temperatures:
experimental study.” Mater. High Temp., 27(4), pp. 285-
293.
Zhang, Z. L., Hauge, M., Ødegård, J., and Thaulow, C.
(1999). “Determining material true stress-strain curve
from tensile specimens with rectangular cross-section.”
Int. J. Solids Struct., 36(23), pp. 3497-3516.
Zhu, J. E., Zeng, L., Ma, L. C, Xia, Y., Zhou, Q., Wang, X.
S., Cao, G. X., Zhuang, H. Y., and Zhang, Y. H. (2013).
“A Hybrid Experimental-numerical Converse Method for
the Necking Behavior Study of High Strength Steel
Sheets.” Proc. 16th Chn. Conf. of Automotive Safety
Technology, Society of Automotive Engineers of China,
Beijing, CHN, pp. 282-293.