International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Plasticity

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijplas

Experimental and numerical investigation of combined

isotropic-kinematic hardening behavior of sheet metals
Jian Cao a,*, Wonoh Lee b, Hang Shawn Cheng a, Mark Seniw a, Hui-Ping Wang c,
Kwansoo Chung d
a
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208, USA
b
Composite Materials Research Group, Korea Institute of Materials Science, 66 Sangnam-dong, Changwon-si,
Gyeongsangnam-do 641-010, Republic of Korea
c
General Motors Corporation, Warren, MI 48090, USA
d
Department of Material Science and Engineering, Seoul National University, 56-1 Shinlim-Dong, Kwanak-Ku, Seoul 151-742,
South Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: To prevent a sheet specimen from buckling subjected to a tension-

Received 3 October 2007 compression cyclic loading, a new fixture has been developed to
Received in final revised form 19 April 2008 use with a regular tensile-compression machine. The novelty of
Available online 10 May 2008
this device lies in 4-block wedge design with pre-loaded springs.
This design allows blocks to freely move in the vertical direction
while providing the normal support to the entire length of the
Keywords:
specimen during the tension-compression cycle. The entire test is
Tension-compression tests
Double-wedge device
easy to setup, which is another advantage of this design. In order
Combined isotropic-kinematic hardening to measure the strain accurately, the transmission type laser
law extensometer was utilized together with the implementation of
Non-symmetric reloading behavior double-side fins in the specimen. Experimental results of ten-
Two-surface model sion-compression tests are presented followed by a review of exist-
ing testing methods. In order to describe the accurate cyclic
tension-compression behavior, the combined isotropic-kinematic
hardening law based on the modified Chaboche model and the
practical two-surface model based on Dafalias-Popov and Krieg
models have been modified in this work, considering the perma-
nent softening behavior during reverse loading and the non-sym-
metric behavior during reloading. Through tension-compression
tests, the material characterization has been performed for three
base materials, BH180, DP600 steels and AA6111-T4 sheets.
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 847 467 1032; fax: +1 847 491 3915.
E-mail address: jcao@northwestern.edu (J. Cao).

0749-6419/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijplas.2008.04.007
 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972 943

1. Introduction

Sheet stamping is the most commonly used manufacturing process to produce thin vehicle panels.
The main challenge in this process is how to deform a sheet panel, satisfying design specifications,
without causing defects such as splits, wrinkling, skid lines, surface distortion and springback. These
are unacceptable for all Class-A panels. Such defects detected at the physical tryout stage require die-
rework which delays the product development progress, and heavily rely on engineers’ experiences
which become increasingly difficult due to retirements. The current state-of-art cycle time from de-
sign to production is 18 months. One fundamental cause of this advancement is the numerical design.
An ideal solution would be to prevent the defect at the tooling design stage so that such defects will
not occur in the physical tryout. Also, since most automotive industries aim shorter lead times to de-
velop new models, computational approaches based on the FEM in the design stage have been encour-
aged to analyze the stamping process (Wenner, 2005). Efficient numerical simulation technique will
save times and resources for the tool design and try-out.
Among many defects occurred in the sheet stamping, the surface distortion and springback are
likely to appear during the reverse loading (unloading) stage after the contact is removed. During
the reverse loading, the commonly observed phenomena are the Bauschinger (1886) effect and
smooth elastic–plastic transient behavior. These are due to the material properties depending on
the complex loading paths. For these mechanical behaviors, simple material models such as isotropic
hardening are not able to model their reverse loading properties correctly. This is a vital issue for accu-
rate springback and surface distortion simulation for the formed parts. Therefore, in order to deal with
the Bauschinger effect and transient behavior during reverse loading, a more sophisticated material
model should be incorporated to characterize the material properties under the reverse loading con-
dition. Typically, the modulus of the stress–strain curve changed drastically under reverse loading and
follows a different pattern as compared to that during the loading stage (Widmark et al., 2000). The
change of modulus significantly affects the predicted onset point. Therefore, the tension-compression
test that can accurately obtain the exact material properties is needed in the first place for springback
and surface distortion prediction. This paper will address two challenges, i.e., how to measure exper-
imentally and how to model numerically. We will first review these two aspects here.
Various experimental techniques have been developed to test materials along reverse loading
paths. Reverse torsion (Anand and Kalindindi, 1994; Chen et al., 1999) and shear tests (Barlat et al.,
2003b) can achieve high strains. However, they face the problem of non-uniform strain distribution
as well as difficulties to interpret the testing results. Bulk compression tests (Abel and Ham, 1966;
Bate and Wilson, 1986) and in-plane compression tests (Ramberg and Miller, 1946; Tan et al.,
1994; Yoshida et al., 2002) provide more uniform strain distribution with appropriate length-to-diam-
eter/thickness ratio. But large strain is not easy to obtain due to the specimen’s tendency to buckle
under compression.
Thus, various methods were recently proposed to suppress the buckling. Boger et al. (2005) used
solid flat plates as buckling constraints and applied normal pressure through a hydraulic clamping
system. But the problem remains as there would be gaps between the die and clamps of the tensile
machine. Kuwabara (2005) developed a device with two pairs of combs to reduce the unsupported
area. Normal forces were provided by the own weight of the die. There are unavoidable uncovered
areas of the sample in between each pair of the ‘fingers’ of the die. These areas are prone to buckle
and the comb device is expensive to machine. None of the methods mentioned above could com-
pletely eliminate the unsupported area, which is one of the main reasons that the specimen
buckles.
In this paper, a novel device to eliminate unsupported area of the in-plane compression specimen is
newly introduced in Section 2. A new novel test fixture has been developed to use a regular tensile-
compression machine (for example, MTS machine) by Cheng et al. (2007). A modified ASTM E8M
sub-sized dogbone specimen with double-sided fins is clamped between the two Teflon sheets in
the test apparatus. The novel wedge design with springs loaded allows blocks to freely move in the
vertical direction while providing the normal support to the entire length of the specimen during
the tension-compression cycle. The use of Teflon sheets minimizes friction in the vertical direction
944 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972

and also accommodates thickness changes to allow the uni-axial compression test condition. The en-
tire test is easy to setup, which is another advantage of this design.
Even though the isotropic hardening model, and kinematic hardening rules by Prager (1956) and
Ziegler (1959) effectively predict the proportional and monotonous loading behavior, these models
cannot well describe the non-monotonous material deformation such as reverse and cyclic loadings.
The isotropic hardening model in which the yield surface expands proportionally, cannot describe the
Bauschinger effect, even though it is easy to use and still has been widely adopted in industry. To ad-
dress this issue, Prager (1956) and Ziegler (1959) proposed the classical kinematic hardening models.
However, these classical kinematic hardening models over-predict the softening behavior and cannot
capture several experimental observations for the cyclic loading, such as the smooth elastic–plastic
transient behavior and the cyclic creep (ratcheting effect) under the stress cycles.
In order to describe the smooth transient behavior during the reverse loading, works has been inves-
tigated by many researchers in the past decades. Mroz (1967) proposed the multi-surface model based
on the linear segment approximation. While this model can describe the Bauschinger effect and non-
linear transient behavior, it requires a large number of yield surfaces to obtain the smooth transient
behavior. Currently, two most widely acceptable models in the sheet metal forming areas are the
one yield surface model by Chaboche (1986) based on nonlinear kinematic hardening and the two-sur-
face model by Krieg (1975), Dafalias and Popov (1976) and McDowell (1985). The nonlinear kinematic
hardening model by Chaboche (1986) can express the smooth transient behavior by introducing an
additional nonlinear back stress term to Prager’s linear kinematic hardening model. In two-surface
models, the continuous plastic modulus is defined by using the bound distance between loading and
bounding surfaces having the same shape. Nowadays the combined isotropic-kinematic hardening
model has been widely used in the sheet forming field (Chaboche and Rousselier, 1983; Khan and Jack-
son, 1999; Geng and Wagoner, 2002; Yoshida and Uemori, 2002), since it can depict the Bauschinger
effect and the smooth elastic–plastic transition as well as the isotropic hardening effect.
Recently, in order to improve the prediction capability of reverse loading and springback behavior,
the modified Chaboche type combined isotropic-kinematic hardening model has been developed to
effectively describe the Bauschinger effect and the transient behavior by Chung et al. (2005). In this
model, the original Chaboche’s nonlinear kinematic hardening model has been modified by using
the Ziegler type back stress based on the generalized plastic work equivalence principle to utilize gen-
eral anisotropic yield stress functions. Also, kinematic hardening parameters are represented as func-
tions of equivalent strain so that they should be obtained from reverse loading tests at several
prestrain levels. However, the modified Chaboche model cannot account for the permanent softening
behavior during the reverse loading, since the reverse loading curve conversed into the compressive
stress by the isotropic hardening law (Kim et al., 2006).
To account for the permanent softening behavior during the reverse loading, the modified Chab-
oche model has been further improved by introducing the softening parameter (Lee et al., 2006). How-
ever, many materials also show the non-symmetric reloading behavior after the reverse loading stage.
Since the reloading behavior is symmetric with its previous reverse loading behavior in the modified
Chaboche model, the non-symmetric reloading behavior at large cyclic deformation cannot be cap-
tured. In this work, in order to describe non-symmetric behavior during the reloading stage after
the reverse loading, the non-symmetric reloading parameter has been introduced into the modified
Chaboche type combined hardening model in Section 3.
Another way to describe the permanent softening and non-symmetric reloading behaviors is to uti-
lize the two-surface model instead of the single-surface model. An advantage of the two-surface mod-
el is to make two yield surfaces flexible, especially for representing the one-dimensional hardening
curve. Lately, a new practical two-surface model was developed based on Dafalias-Popov and Krieg
models (Lee et al., 2007a) and has been also utilized in this work. Lee et al. (2007b) further extended
the theory to describe high anisotropic and asymmetric constitutive behaviors of magnesium alloy
sheets. This model can incorporate general yield functions as well as the combined isotropic-kine-
matic hardening behaviors of both loading and bounding surfaces. The combined hardening amount
is decoupled into the isotropic and kinematic parts at a certain ratio by Krieg’s idea. In this work,
non-symmetric reloading gap function has been newly defined for reloading behaviors in Section 3.
 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972 945

For three base materials, BH180, DP600 steels and AA6111-T4 sheets, the material characterization
has been performed by uni-axial tension-compression tests using the newly developed double-wedge
device. Hardening parameters were determined by using the modified Chaboche type combined iso-
tropic-kinematic hardening law with permanent softening and non-symmetric reloading parameters
as well as the two-surface model by Lee et al. (2007a)with the non-symmetric reloading gap function.
To verify the characterized material properties, the tension-compression FEM simulations were per-
formed and the history of the crosshead displacement versus gauge-fins displacement was compared
with the experimental results. Results are presented in Section 4 followed by a summary and discus-
sions in Section 5.

2. Double-wedge in-plane uni-axial tension-compression device

The conceptual design and real shape of the new in-plane tension-compression fixture are shown
in Fig. 1. The specimen with double-side fins is clamped by the upper and lower clamps installed on
the tensile machine. The double-side fins were introduced for measuring the strain by utilizing a laser
extensometer. Four wedge-shape plates cover the entire specimen on both sides. Two pairs of wedge
plates are simply placed on top of the bottom clamp, one pair on each side of the specimen. The wedge
plates can slide against each other as well as against the top and bottom clamps. A spring under ten-
sion is installed on each side of the device to ensure the wedge plates on the same side of the specimen
being in firm contact with each other. The diameter of the spring is 5 mm and the initial length is

Fig. 1. The double-wedge in-plane tension-compression device: (a) conceptual design and (b) real fixture.
946 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972

18 mm. This mechanism allows the wedge plates to cover the specimen surfaces completely, no mat-
ter whether the specimen is under tension or compression. The gap between plates can be controlled
by adjusting the six screws to match the thickness of the specimen.
The actual device is made of aluminum blocks. Fig. 2 shows a picture taken from at the fully com-
pressed state during the tension-compression test. As shown in Fig. 2, wedge plates are very easy to
machine. Each plate is 76.2 mm tall, 63.5 mm wide and 19.05 mm thick. Three long bolts are used to
fix the relative position of the plates in each pair. Teflon sheets are attached on the inner surface of the
plates to reduce friction between the plates and the specimen. Note that the thickness change of
sheets in compression can be accommodated since the 0.5mm thick Teflon film can play a role like
a damping tool so that the sheet won’t go into the plane strain condition. The verification about the
plane strain condition has been done using the FEM simulation and this is discussed in the following
section. A user can adjust the spring-loaded bolts to provide specimens with different thickness as
well as to apply a different amount of normal pressure on the specimen while keeping the Teflon
thickness large enough to assure the uni-axial compression test condition. There is a steel spring on
each side of the device to ensure firm contact between the plates. During trial tests, it was found that
when a thick specimen tried to buckle, the alignment of the top and bottom plates is difficult to hold.
The top and bottom wedges plates were not able to keep firm contact due to the large twist forces gen-
erated by the buckled specimen. Therefore, the device was modified by adding sliding keyways as
shown in Fig. 3. The keys have sliding fits with the slots. With the improved fixture, tests for
1.6 mm thick DP600 steel were successfully performed.
Note that following the concept presented here in this paper, users can design their own fixtures
and testing procedures based on their desired total vertical displacement and deformation sequence.
In Fig. 4, three different possible stages were illustrated. Fig. 4a shows one of extreme configurations
with fully loaded springs. Because there is no room to further move compressively from this stage, the
test would start in the tensile direction. Therefore, when this minimum stage is considered as the ini-
tial configuration, only tension-compression tests are available and the maximum tensile displace-
ment becomes 15 mm. Similarly, if the maximum stage (Fig. 4c) is chosen as the initial stage, only

Fig. 2. The double-wedge fixture on a tensile machine.

 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972 947

Fig. 3. Sliding slot and key in the double-wedge device: (a) CAD drawing and (b) inner picture.

Fig. 4. Three different stages of the double-wedge plates: (a) minimum stage, (b) middle stage, and (c) maximum stage.

compression-tension tests can be performed. Therefore, a user can select the initial configuration be-
tween these two extreme stages according to the desired strain levels, and then can carry out either
tension-compression or compression-tension tests. For example, if the middle stage as shown in Fig.
4b is considered as the starting configuration, both 11 mm tension/15 mm compression and 4 mm
compression/15 mm tension tests can be performed.

2.1. Correction of friction between wedge plates and spring

Fig. 5 shows the history of load versus the crosshead’s displacement for tension-compression tests
with a specimen but without gripping. The loading values are negative due to the negative spring force
in the setup (initially with 18 N), which is the reason that the wedge plates are firmly against the
clamps to ensure a good contact. Lubricants are applied on the Teflon sheets attached on the wedge
plates as well as on the specimen surface to reduce the friction. Before the test, the gap between
948 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972

10
0
-10
-20 Fl = -18+2.4D

Force (N)
-30
-40
-50
-60 Fr = -80+6.2D
-70
-80
-90
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Crosshead displacement (mm)

Fig. 5. Load–displacement curves for the tension-compression test without gripping.

wedge plates is adjusted carefully to ensure the specimen can slide freely along the plates and main-
tain firm contact. Because of the existence of frictions between wedged surfaces and springs, these
forces have to be subtracted from the measurements. However, it was found that the magnitude of
these ‘noises’ (about 50 N at maximum) is rather small compared to the forces measured in the real
tests, which are usually above 1500 N for aluminum alloy sheet, 3000 N for BH180 steel sheet and
5000 N for DP600 steel sheet. Two linear equations are used to approximate the curves during the
loading and reverse loading sections.
F l ¼ 18 þ 2:4D
ð1Þ
F r ¼ 80 þ 6:2D
where Fl and Fr are loads (with unit, N) for loading and reverse loading, respectively and D is the cross-
head displacement (with unit, mm). During data processing, when the specimen is under loading, Fl is
subtracted from the overall load. Also, Fr is subtracted if the specimen undergoes reverse loading. Note
that Fl and Fr are different from each other because the tension and compression modes are not sym-
metric to the spring position as shown in Fig. 4.

2.2. Consideration of frictional force between wedge inner surfaces and specimen

Using the existing in-plane compressive device such as a hydraulic clamping system (Boger et al.,
2005), the frictional force between clamping surfaces and specimen occurs during the tension-com-
pression test. Therefore, this force amount should be subtracted from the measured force data. Bala-
krishnan (1999) found a frictional coefficient by considering changes in the yielding force for several
clamping forces. Boger et al. (2005) adjusted the frictional coefficient by comparing the supported ten-
sile curve with the unsupported tension curve. For the case that the direct measurement of the friction
coefficient is not available, the indirect method to determine the friction coefficient was suggested by
Lee et al. (2005); i.e.,
F w  F wo
l¼ ð2Þ
N
where Fw and Fwo are the forces with and without the clamping device, respectively. The normal force
N is calculated from the applied pressure. Lee et al. (2005) reported the frictional coefficient was
around 0.04 which is well known.
In the double-wedge device, it can be ignored to subtract the frictional force from the normal force,
because the relative movement is cancelled out in the loading direction along the whole specimen. Fig.
6 shows how the frictional forces are cancelled out in the compression test using the double-wedge
device. During the compression test, the lower fixture is fixed while the upper fixture is moving down
with the constant velocity of v0(t) at a certain testing time t. Assuming the linear distribution of the
speed, the specimen has the speed from zero at the bottom line to v0(t) at the top crosshead position.
 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972 949

b
Upper fixture
v0 ( t )
e
fixtur
in u pper
imen
v0 ( t ) 2 Spec
re Rela
e r fixtu tive s
en in low peed
in up
Specim per f
ixture
Lower fixture
Rela
tives l0 ( t ) 2 l0 ( t )
peed
in low
er fix Exactly same difference
ture
− v0 ( t ) 2

Fig. 6. Schematic view of relative motion between the specimen and the fixture blocks in the double-wedge device during the
compression test.

Therefore, the relative speed difference of the specimen to the lower fixture is from v0(t)/2 to zero.
Similarly, the speed difference of the specimen to the upper fixture becomes from zero to v0(t)/2. So
now, the difference is exactly same in two different directions, therefore, the friction effect in the load-
ing direction is cancelled out along the whole specimen. Note that the same analysis can be applied to
the tension test. Ideally, no normal forces arises during the tension test, since the thickness of the
specimen decreases while the double-wedge device has a fixed gap between two blocks so that the
block surface won’t contact the specimen. In order to verify the negligible effect of the frictional force
during the compression test, FEM simulation was performed and discussed at next section.

2.3. Consideration of biaxial effect and plane strain condition

In previous works, Boger et al. (2005) and Lee et al. (2005) calculated the effect of the biaxial
through-thickness stress using Hill’s (1948) and Barlat’s et al. Yld2000-2d (2003a) anisotropic yield
950 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972

functions, respectively. They reported that the biaxial effect is small and the difference is less than 1%.
Therefore, the biaxial correction would be included in the range of the experimental error at raw tests.
For the newly developed device, this biaxial effect can be completely neglected during the tension test.
Because the device is constrained in the thickness direction, there is no normal force on the specimen
during the tensile test so that no biaxial stress can be arisen during the tensile test. For the compres-
sion test, the biaxial effect was also neglected in this work through the verification by the following
FEM simulation.
Due to the fixed gap between the plates, the Teflon (PTFE, polytetrafluoroethylene) films are at-
tached on the inner surface of the plates so that the material status during the compression test won’t
be under the plane strain condition. In order to verify the biaxial effect and the plane strain condition,
the FEM simulation was performed for the compression test of 1.6 mm thick DP600 steel sheet with
0.4 mm thick Teflon film. Since PTFE has high melt viscosity and temperature dependant mechanical
properties, the time-dependant thermo-mechanical constitutive models have been developed by sev-
eral researchers. Khan and Zhang (2001) extended KHL (Khan, Huang and Liang) visco-plastic model
for polymeric materials and obtained successful correlation with experimental results. Bergström and
Hilbert (2005) developed the DNF (Dual Network Fluoropolymer) model and captured material re-
sponses accurately. As for experimental works, tensile and compressive properties were investigated
at wide ranged strain-rates and temperature by Rae and Dattelbaum (2004) and Rae and Brown
(2005).
For the FEM simulation of the compression test of DP600 steel sheet, the material constants for the
Teflon film were referred from the work by Rae and Brown (2005). Young’s modulus was 525 MPa and
Poisson’s ratio was 0.36. The plastic hardening curve was fit with the following exponential increasing
function
r ¼ A þ BðexpðCeÞ  1Þ: ð3Þ
For DP600 steel sheet, the isotropic hardening law was assumed for this specific simulation and Holl-
omon type hardening function was considered as

r ¼ Aðe þ BÞC : ð4Þ

For both materials, Mises yield stress function was also assumed and hardening parameters were
summarized at Table 1.
The solid elements were utilized for both materials and a dog-bone shaped model was considered
for DP600 steel sheet with one-eighth symmetry. The in-plane mesh sizes were 0.75 mm  0.75 mm
and 1.0 mm  1.0 mm for the DP600 steel sheet and Teflon film, respectively and four elements were
used along the thickness for both materials. In order to perform the FEM calculation, the ABAQUS/Im-
plicit software has been used for the modified ASTM E8M sub-sized specimen of DP600 steel sheet as
shown in Fig. 7a and the frictional coefficient was assumed to be 0.04.
In this work, the modified ASTM E8M sub-sized specimen has been utilized instead of the original
ASTM E8M sub-sized specimen. The original specimen is 6 mm in width while the modified one used
in this work is 10 mm in width. The modified geometry has a smaller aspect value in terms of the
length to the width ratio so that the smaller aspect ratio specimen has a less tendency of buckling.
In order to make sure of the uniform deformation of the modified specimen with a larger width,
the tension-compression FEM simulations were carried out for both original and modified specimens
before investigating the biaxial effect and the plane strain condition. To quantify the uniformity of the

Table 1
Tensile hardening properties of PTFE, DP600 and BH180 steel sheets

Parameters PTFEa DP600 BH180

r (MPa) A 9.12 981.07 593.30
B 47.86 0.00081 0.012
C 0.46 0.17 0.24
a
Fit from the reference by Rae and Brown (2005).
 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972 951

b
0.005
6mm width
0.004 10mm width
Variation (VR)

0.003

0.002

0.001

0.000
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12
Measured strain from gauge length

Fig. 7. (a) Modified ASTM E8M-00 sub-size specimen (unit: mm) and (b) variations of strains.

strain distribution, the following variation index of strains was defined within the gauge length
domain.
R
jei  em jdV elem
VR ¼ R ð5Þ
em dV elem
where VR is the normalized variation index of strain distribution, ei is the strain at each element, em is
the measured strain from the gauge-fins and Velem is the total volume of elements within the gauge
length (20 mm). As shown in Fig. 7b, the modified specimen gave very low variation of strains (below
0.5%) even the value is higher than the original standard specimen case.
Fig. 8a shows the transverse and thickness strains during the compression test. Strain values within
the gauge length region (20 mm) were obtained and averaged. Note that all the values were expressed
as the absolute value. The curve confirms that Teflon films attached on the inner surface of the plates
ensure the material status won’t go under the plane strain condition, because the thickness strain
arises during the compression test.
According to the work by Boger et al. (2005), the biaxiality should be properly corrected for the ten-
sion-compression tests with high frictional and normal forces, and they obtained reliable results for
the unsupported tension test after both friction and biaxial corrections. Boger et al. (2005) and Lee
et al. (2005) also reported that the biaxial effect is small and the difference is less than 1–2% for
the tests with the low supporting normal force and then, the biaxial correction would be included
952 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972

a 0.15 b 1.6
Transverse strain
Thickness strain
1.2 σ −σc
0.10 σc

Stress ratio (%)

True strain

0.8

0.05
0.4

0.00 0.0
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25
Compressive true strain - loading direction Compressive true strain - loading direction

c 1.2
Stress ratio due to the friction (%)

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25
Compressive true strain - loading direction

Fig. 8. Verifications of (a) plain-strain condition, (b) biaxial effect of the through-the-thickness stress and (c) frictional force
effect.

in the range of the experimental error at raw tests. Comparing with these previous works, the stress
ratio curves between the equivalent stress r  and the compressive axial loading stress rc in this work
were shown in Fig. 8b. The figure shows that the ratio jðr   rc Þ=rc j is less than 1.6% at the 25% com-
pressive strain level. Therefore, it verifies that the biaxial effect of the through-the-thickness stress can
be neglected in the tension-compression test using the double-wedge device.
In the previous work using the hydraulic press system by Boger et al. (2005), the correction of the
frictional force might become necessary when the relatively high constant normal force (10–15 kN) is
applied from the beginning of the test. They also reported that the deviation of the flow stress be-
comes less than 4% for the 5 kN side normal force. As shown in Fig. 8c, the stress ratio jrf/rcj between
the stress rf due to the frictional force and the compressive stress rc in this work was less than 1.2%
because of the low normal force arising in the compression test using the double-wedge device, which
was 2.5 kN at the 25% compressive true strain level. Therefore, with considering that the overall fric-
tional force in the loading direction can be cancelled out, the effect of the frictional force during the
compression test in the double-wedge device can be ignored due to its low normal force.
 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972 953

2.4. Strain measurement and specimen design

Since the specimen surface is fully covered when the double-wedge device is used for the tension-
compression test, regular extensometers used in the standard test cannot be applied to measure the
strain. In order to measure the strain correctly, the transmission type laser extensometer was utilized
and the double-side fins were considered in the specimen. As shown in Fig. 9, the vertical laser line is
emitted from the source and the receiver detects the interfered laser signal so that the displacement
between two fins of the sample can be measured during the test. In this work, LaserMike model was
used for the transmission type laser extensometer. The typical resolution of the laser extensometer is
0.5–5 lm so the laser extensometer is accurate enough to measure the plastic deformation even
though it has less resolution than the strain gage. Here, the LaserMike model has 1.0 lm resolution.
Also, the laser extensometer may be applicable to measure the Young’s modulus because it can mea-
sure about 100 detecting points within the elastic range for the ASTM-E8M standard sample with
50 mm gauge length. Another possible way to measure the strain using the optical system such as
the laser extensometer is to utilize the transparent materials for the four wedge blocks instead of met-
als. Currently, development of a transparent double-wedge device for the optical measurement sys-
tem is in progress as discussed in Appendix A.

Fig. 9. Strain measurement using the transmission type laser extensometer: (a) conceptual design and (b) real setup.
954 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972

Fig. 10. The tension-compression specimens with single-side fins and double-side fins.

Two fins on the specimen may play a role like the dead boundary zones so that they can give a non-
uniform strain distribution within the gauge length. In order to examine the uniformity of the strain,
following FEM simulations were performed for two different specimen designs as shown in Fig. 10.
Based on the modified ASTM E8M sub-sized specimen (Fig. 7a), single-side fins and double-side fins
were designed in the specimen. For the 0.8 mm thick BH180 steel sheet, FEM simulations were carried
out for the tension-compression test. The isotropic hardening law was assumed for this simulation
and the Hollomon type hardening function was considered as Eq. (4). The isotropic von Mises yield
stress function was also assumed and the hardening parameters were summarized at Table 1. Shell
elements were utilized for the sample and a full sized dogbone shaped model was considered for
BH180 steel sheets. The in-plane mesh sizes were 0.5 mm  0.5 mm and the ABAQUS/Standard with
the implicit integration method has been used.
As shown in Fig. 11, the variation index Eq. (5) curves show that the specimen with double-side fins
has a lower amount of variations. The axial strain contours for both specimens were also plotted in Fig.
12 at three stages, A (at the maximum variation point), B (at the end of tensile test) and C (at the end of

0.10
A
0.08
Variation (VR)

0.06 B

0.04
C
0.02 Double-side fins
One-side fins
0.00
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10
Measured strain from gauge fins

Fig. 11. The variations of strains for single-side and double-side fins.
 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972 955

Fig. 12. Strain contours of the specimens with (a) single-side fins and (b) double-side fins.

compression test). From Figs. 11 and 12, it was found that the specimen with double-side fins resulted
in a more uniform strain distribution than that from the specimen with single-side fins. Also, once the
gauge region between fins is considered, the specimen with double-side fins showed very uniform
strain distribution. Based on this result, the specimen with double-side fins has been used for exper-
imental tension-compression tests. In the experimental tests, specimens with the double-side fin de-
sign were carefully prepared using the waterjet cutting process and the fins are paper-sanded to a
thinner thickness compared to the bulk material so that the specimen can move freely without any
contact with the Teflon films or block surfaces. Also, in order to minimize the effect of the friction,
the oil was well put on the specimen surface. As shown in Fig. 13a, the tension-compression test re-
sults using the specimen with double-side fins showed a good match with the simple tension test re-
sult using the regular extensometer without fins.

2.5. Capability and repeatability

To demonstrate the capability and repeatability of the developed double-wedge device, the ten-
sion-compression and compression-tension tests were conducted for the 0.8 mm BH180 steel sheet.
The initial stages of the double-wedge device for both tension-compression and compression-tension
956 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972

a 400

True stress (MPa)

200 Simple tension
Prestrain=0.020
Prestrain=0.050
Prestrain=0.080
0 Prestrain=0.100
Prestrain=0.130
Prestrain=0.152
-200

-400
0.00 0.03 0.06 0.09 0.12 0.15 0.18
True strain
b 400
Compressive true stress (MPa)

200 Prestrain=0.005
Prestrain=0.010
Prestrain=0.026
Prestrain=0.051
0 Prestrain=0.068
Prestrain=0.087

-200

-400
0.00 0.03 0.06 0.09
Compressive true strain

c 400
True stress (MPa)

200

-200

-400
0.00 0.03 0.06 0.09 0.12
True strain

Fig. 13. Test results of the 0.8 mm BH180 steel sheet: (a) tension-compression test, (b) compression-tension test, and (c)
repeatability (at 0.12 prestrain level).

tests were selected by following Fig. 4a and c, respectively. Note that the thinnest material was chosen
in order to examine the device capability. As shown in Fig. 13a, the tension-compression test results
showed that the double-wedge device can give stable tension-compression data until the 0.152 pre-
strain level (15%) for a sheet with a thickness of 0.8 mm. For the compression-tension tests, the suc-
cessful data were obtained until the 0.087 compressive prestrain (9%) as shown in Fig. 13b. Note that
Boger et al. (2005), Wagoner et al. (2006) and Lou et al. (2007) reported successful tension-compres-
sion results were obtained for 10–15% tensile prestrain levels. Also they obtained 7–10% attainable
strains for the compression tests. Therefore, it can be concluded that the new device can give stable
and reliable results as much as the previous results by Boger et al. (2005), Wagoner et al. (2006)
and Lou et al. (2007). In order to examine the repeatability of the developed device, three different ten-
 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972 957

sion-compression tests were performed at the 0.12 prestrain level. Test results were plotted in Fig. 13c
and the figure showed a good repeatability for several different tension-compression tests.

3. Hardening models

3.1. Combined isotropic-kinematic hardening law based on modified Chaboche model

The combined isotropic-kinematic hardening constitutive law based on the modified Chaboche
model (Chung et al., 2005) is given by
f ðr  aÞ  r
 iso ¼ 0 ð6Þ
where a is the back stress for the kinematic hardening and r
 iso is the effective stress related to the
isotropic hardening. In the Chaboche model, the back stress increment is composed of two terms,
da = da1  da2 to differentiate transient hardening behaviors during loading and reverse loading.
The evolution of the back stress for the modified Chaboche model is based on the Ziegler (1959) type
back stress and it becomes
 
da1 ðr  aÞ
da1 ¼ de : ð7Þ
de r iso
Also, the nonlinear term of the back stress for the transient behavior is
 
da2
da2 ¼ de a: ð8Þ
de
Note that a
 1 and a2 are functions of the accumulative effective strain e in Eqs. (7) and (8).
To complete the constitutive law, hardening behavior describing the back stress movements and
the change in yield surface size should be provided for da  1 , da2 and dr iso , respectively. When only
kinematic hardening behavior is considered, dr  iso becomes zero. After considering the plastic work
equivalence principle, the following differential equation is obtained during uni-axial tension-com-
pression tests:

da 1 da2 da
 da

  a ¼ or  h1  h2 a
¼ ð9Þ
de de de de
Note that the positive sign is corresponding to the loading stage and the negative sign is for the reverse
loading in Eq. (9).

3.2. Permanent softening behavior during reverse loading for combined isotropic-kinematic hardening law

Schematic stress–strain curves for the loading-reverse loading tests are shown in Fig. 14a. Here, the
curve ABC is the hardening curve for monotonous loading, and curves BDE and BDF are for reverse
loading after a prestrain B. For the comparison with the loading curve, reverse loading curves DE
and DF are rotated into the positive stress region as curves D0 E0 and D0 F0 . The curve DF (or D0 F0 ) con-
verges into the loading curve ABC without permanent softening while the curve DE (or D0 E0 ) shows
the permanent softening. For the monotonous loading and reverse loading, the limit values of the back
stress derived by Kim et al. (2006) become

h1 ðeÞ
lim a
 ðeÞ ¼  lim : ð10Þ
e!1 e!1 h2 ðeÞ
In general, h1 and h2 show exponentially decaying behavior so that h1 ¼ a3 þ b3 expðc3eÞ and
h2 ¼ a4 þ b4 expðc4eÞ are usually used for fitting the experimental result, then lime!1 a  ðeÞ ¼ a3 =a4 .
Therefore the curves ABC and BDF converge to ðr  iso ð1Þ þ a3 =a4 Þ for loading and reverse loading,
respectively.
In order to describe the permanent softening in reverse loading, hardening parameter, h1, is mod-
ified by introducing the softening parameter, n (Lee et al., 2006), i.e.,
958 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972

a Without softening
σ C
F’
B E’

A D’
With softening

εp

D
E
F

σ H
b G B
G’
F
A
Symmetric re-loading

εp
Non-symmetric re-loading C

D
E
Fig. 14. Schematic tension-compression curves (a) with a permanent softening and (b) with a non-symmetric reloading
behaviors.

s
h1 ¼ h1  nðe Þ ð11Þ
where e is the accumulative effective strain measured during reverse loading and 0:0 < nðe Þ 6 1:0,
while nðe ¼ 0:0Þ ¼ 1:0. The softening parameter is considered as
n ¼ a5 þ b5 expðc5e Þ: ð12Þ
where a5, b5, c5 are the values dependent on the total effective strain during the previous reverse load-
ing, epre . Also, values of a5, b5, c5 are parameterized as

a5 ¼ a15 þ a25 expða35epre Þ

1 2
b5 ¼ b5 ð1  expðb5epre ÞÞ ð13Þ
c5 ¼ c15 ð1  expðc25epre ÞÞ

3.3. Non-symmetric reloading behavior for combined isotropic-kinematic hardening law

Schematic stress–strain curve for one cyclic tension-compression test was shown in Fig. 14b. Here,
the curve AB is the hardening curve for monotonous loading, and BCDE is the reverse loading curve.
From the point E, the reloading occurs and the hardening curve converges to the point H. In general,
the reloading curve FGH should be symmetric with its previous reverse loading curve CDE. However,
 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972 959

most materials show non-symmetric reloading behavior such as the curve FG0 H while converging to
the same hardening point H as the symmetric reloading curve FGH.
For the case that there is no softening behavior during the reloading, the softening parameter n can
be applied only for the reverse loading. To represent non-symmetric transient behavior during the
reloading from the reverse loading, the hardening parameters h1 and h2 are modified by using the
non-symmetric reloading parameter g,
t
h1 ¼ h1  gðeþ Þ
t
ð14Þ
h2 ¼ h2  gðeþ Þ
where eþ is the accumulative effective strain measured during the reloading and 0:0 < gðeþ Þ 6 1:0.
Note that the both parameters are modified by one same parameter g, so that the limit value of the
non-symmetric reloading curve can be preserved. The transient parameter was considered as
g ¼ b6 expðc6eþ Þ ð15Þ
where b6 and c6 are values dependent on the total accumulative effective strain during the previous
reverse loading and reloading, eþ
pre . The values of b6 and c6 were parameterized as
1 2 3
b6 ¼ b6 þ b6 expðb6eþpre Þ
ð16Þ
c6 ¼ c16 þ c26 expðc36eþpre Þ

3.4. Two-surface model

Here, the two-surface model by Lee et al. (2007a) is briefly summarized. For the inner loading sur-
face, the yield function is f ðr  aÞ  r
 iso ¼ 0 which is the same form as Eq. (6). In the two-surface mod-
el, the back stress is translated along the direction r  a(Ziegler type) and it becomes
 
da ra
da ¼ de : ð17Þ
de r iso
The outer bounding yield surface F is defined as
 iso ¼ 0
FðR  AÞ  R ð18Þ
 iso is the size of the bound-
where R and A are the stress and back stress of the bounding surface, and R
ing surface. Under the condition that the bounding surface F and the loading surface f have the same
shapes and surface normal directions, the relationship between the bounding and loading stresses is
obtained as
RA ra
 iso ¼ r
R  iso
: ð19Þ

Since two surfaces relatively move along the direction R  r, the back stress of the bounding surface
becomes

dA ¼ da  dlðR  rÞ ¼ dA1  dA2 ð20Þ

and the second term of the back stress can be defined as

dA2
dA2 ¼ ðR  rÞ: ð21Þ
r iso

4. Material characterization

To measure the combined isotropic-kinematic hardening behavior and determine material param-
eters for the two-surface model, uni-axial tension-compression tests were performed for 0.8 mm thick
BH180 steel, 1.6 mm thick DP600 steel and 0.75 mm thick AA6111-T4 sheets. Loading directions are
960 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972

a 600
Simple Tension 180B steel
500 T-C prestrain: 0.00203
T-C prestrain: 0.0494

True stress (Mpa)

T-C prestrain: 0.0795
400

300

200

100

0
0.00 0.03 0.06 0.09 0.12
True strain

b 1200
Tension DP600
1000 T-C prestrain: 0.00545
T-C prestrain: 0.083
True stress (Mpa)

800 T-C prestrain: 0.115

600

400

200

0
0.00 0.03 0.06 0.09 0.12 0.15
True strain

c 600
Tension AA6111-T4
500 T-C prestrain: 0.0505
T-C prestrain: 0.085
True stress (Mpa)

400 T-C prestrain: 0.1125

300

200

100

0
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20
True strain

Fig. 15. Tension-compression test results for base materials: (a) BH180 steel, (b) DP600 steel, and (c) AA6111-T4.

aligned with rolling directions of base materials and modified ASTM E8M sub-sized specimens with
double-side fins were fabricated as shown in Fig. 10.
Stress–strain responses of tension-compression tests measured along the rolling direction for
three base materials were plotted in Fig. 15. The tests were performed at three different pre-
strain levels. Note that the reloading regions have been excluded in Fig. 15 in order to examine
the softening behavior at first. For the tension-compression tests, bottom halves were also moved
to the top. As shown in Fig. 15, it can be seen that BH180 and DP600 steels show the perma-
nent softening behavior during the reverse loading at all prestrain levels while AA6111-T4 does
not.
 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972 961

4.1. Determination of hardening parameters for the combined isotropic-kinematic hardening law

In order to obtain material parameters of work-hardening behaviors for combination type isotro-
pic-kinematic hardening constitutive laws, two hardening types are separated (Lee et al., 2005). From
the measured tension-compression tests, the effective yield stress and back stress are calculated from
jr j þ jrr j
r iso ¼ f
2 ð22Þ
jrf j  jrr j
a~ ¼
2
at each unloading position. Here, rf is the yield stress at the start of unloading and rr is the initial yield
stress during the reverse loading, respectively. As for the isotropic hardening behavior of the BH180

a 600 Experiment 180B steel

Simulation
400
True stress (MPa)

200

-200

-400
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08
True strain

b 1000 Experiment DP600

800 Simulation
True stress (MPa)

600
400
200
0
-200
-400
-600
-800
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12
True strain

500
c Experiment AA6111-T4
400 Simulation
True stress (MPa)

300
200
100
0
-100
-200
-300
-400
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12
True strain

Fig. 16. Calculated and measured hardening behaviors of base materials in tension-compression tests without considering
softening and non-symmetric reloading behavior for the combined isotropic-kinematic hardening law: (a) BH180 steel, (b)
DP600 steel, and (c) AA6111-T4.
962 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972

steel, Hollomon type power law type was utilized for the total hardening amount with Voce type kine-
matic hardening. For AA6111-T4, Voce type work-hardening laws showed good curve fitting for the
isotropic hardening. However, for DP600 steel material, it can be seen that the yield surface does
not expand after reverse loading–reloading as shown in Fig. 16b. The elastic stress ranges for both re-
verse loading and reloading are almost double of the initial yield stress value at all prestrain levels.
Therefore, the change in the yield surface size, dr iso becomes zero and only kinematic hardening
behavior is considered for the DP600 steel sheet. Therefore, the isotropic hardening curves for three
materials can be fitted as
r iso ¼ Kðe þ e0 Þn  b2 ð1  exp½c2 eÞ for BH180
c1 e
ð23Þ
riso ¼ a1 þ b1 ð1  e Þ for DP600 and AA6111-T4


Note that b1 and c1 are ignored for the DP600 steel due to the pure kinematic hardening behavior. As
for kinematic hardening curves, Voce type hardening curves were utilized a
 1 ðeÞ and a2 ðeÞ. Therefore, h1
and h2 are obtained as

Table 2
Isotropic-kinematic hardening parameters for the combined isotropic-kinematic hardening law

Parameters BH180 DP600 AA6111-T4

r iso (MPa) a1 or K 503.75 290.0 117.60
b1 or e0 0.0073 – 129.23
c1 or n 0.19 – 9.02
b2 131.63 – –
c2 15.14 – –
a 1 (MPa) a3 22900.12 46313.55 18900.29
b3 148.77 8789.34 10248.58
c3 65.75 52.09 1666.76
a2 (MPa) a4 201.83 124.05 193.24
b4 801.73 282.17 660.12
c4 54.36 47.28 50.14

Table 3
Softening parameters for the combined isotropic-kinematic hardening law

Parameters BH180 DP600

a5 a15 0.68 0.83
a25 0.32 0.17
a35 184.12 2492.72
1
b5 b5 0.32 0.17
2
b5 182.22 19951.26
c5 c15 791.74 610.63
c25 68.78 32.56

Table 4
Non-symmetric reloading parameters for the combined isotropic-kinematic hardening law

Parameters BH180 DP600 AA6111-T4

1
b6 b6 0.16 0.15 0.16
2
b6 0.84 0.85 0.84
2
b6 55.35 7.79 17.59
c6 c16 9.04 1.09 9.12
c26 109.26 887.93 690.87
c26 14.37 34.28 38.59
 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972 963

h1 ¼ a3 þ b3 ec3e
ð24Þ
h2 ¼ a4 þ b4 ec4e
The constants obtained from the tension-compression test data for all three materials were summa-
rized in Table 2.
Using material parameters obtained from the test data, the tension-compression test data were
numerically calculated using the modified Chaboche model for comparison with the measured data
as shown in Fig. 16. Plots confirm that the modified Chaboche model well represents the hardening
data including Bauschinger and transient behavior. But there is still the discrepancy between the cal-
culated and measured data due to the permanent softening in the measured data of BH180 and DP600
steel sheets and the non-symmetric reloading behavior of all three materials. The permanent softening
and the non-symmetric reloading behavior were not properly accounted for in calculation by assign-

a 600 Experiment 180B steel

Simulation
400
True stress (MPa)

200

-200

-400
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08
True strain

b 1000
Experiment
800 DP600
Simulation
True stress (MPa)

600
400
200
0
-200
-400
-600
-800
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12
True strain

c 500
Experiment AA6111-T4
400
Simulation
True stress (MPa)

300
200
100
0
-100
-200
-300
-400
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12
True strain

Fig. 17. Calculated and measured hardening behaviors of base materials in tension-compression tests with considering soft-
ening and non-symmetric reloading behavior for the combined isotropic-kinematic hardening law: (a) BH180 steel, (b) DP600
steel, and (c) AA6111-T4.
964 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972

ing the softening and non-symmetric reloading parameters as n = 1.0 and g = 1.0. From Eqs. (12),(13),
(15) and (16), both softening and non-symmetric reloading parameters can be obtained and all corre-
sponding constants were summarized in Tables 3 and 4.
Hardening behaviors re-calculated with softening and non-symmetric reloading parameters were
compared in Fig. 17, which confirm that the modified Chaboche model with the softening and non-
symmetric reloading parameters is one of good representations for the permanent softening and
the non-symmetric reloading behavior as well as Bauschinger and transient behaviors.

4.2. Determination of hardening parameters for the two-surface model

Similarly to the modified Chaboche model, the hardening parameters of the two-surface model can
be determined from the one-dimensional uni-axial tension-compression tests. As shown in Fig. 18, the
curve AB is the hardening curve for monotonous loading, and BCD is the reverse loading curve. From
the point D, the reloading occurs and the hardening curve converges to the point F. From the uni-axial
tension-compression curve, the bounding curve R  can be defined and then the gap functions are ob-
tained for initial loading, reverse loading and reloading stages, respectively. By defining  dreverse and

dreload properly, the permanent softening and non-symmetric reloading behaviors can be captured.
Note that dreload was assumed to be the same as 
dreverse in the previous work (Lee et al., 2007a). In this
work, these two gap functions are separately defined according to corresponding loading curves.

σ δreload Σ
F
B
δload
A E

εp
C
δreverse
Σ
D

Fig. 18. Schematic tension-compression curve for the two-surface model.

Table 5
Bounding surface parameters for the two-surface model

Parameters (MPa) BH180 DP600 AA6111-T4

k0 375.0 800.0 330.0
k1 200.0 0.0 245.0

Table 6
Loading gap function parameters for the two-surface model

Parameters BH180 DP600 AA6111-T4

l0 26.67 44.20 23.89
l1 33.50 138.42 123.76
l2 64.86 107.82 9.50
l3 101.22 303.36 40.46
l4 10.43 11.90 65.75
 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972 965

For the uni-axial test as a reference state, the bounding and loading stresses have a following
relationship
 ðeÞ ¼ r
R  ðeÞ þ dðeÞ ð25Þ
where dðeÞ is a gap function which depends on the initial gap 
din , measured at the start of the reverse
loading. The total bounding and loading stresses are decoupled into isotropic and kinematic parts as
following,
dr
 ¼ dr
 iso þ da ¼ ml dr
 þ ð1  ml Þdr

ð26Þ
 ¼ dR
dR  ¼ mb dR
 iso þ dA  þ ð1  mb ÞdR

where ml and mb the ratios of the isotropic hardening for the loading and bounding surfaces, respec-
tively. In this work, the total bounding surface is expressed by a linear hardening function of the
equivalent strain,
 ¼ k0 þ k1e
R ð27Þ
where k0 and k1 are constant values, and the gap functions are defined as
dload ¼ l0 þ l1 expðl2eÞ þ l3 expðl4eÞ
dreverse ¼ m0 þ m1 expðm2e Þ ð28Þ
dreload ¼ n0 þ n1 expðn2eþ Þ

for initial loading, reverse loading and reloading stages, respectively. In Eq. (28), e and eþ are the accu-
mulative effective strains for the reverse loading and reloading steps, respectively. Note that mi and ni

a 250
Parameters for the gap function

m2
200

150
m0
100

m1
50
160 170 180 190 200 210
Initial gap, δin (MPa)

b 180
Parameters for the gap function

160

140 n1

120

100 n0

80 n2
60
260 265 270 275 280 285
Initial gap, δin (MPa)

Fig. 19. Gap function parameters of the BH180 steel sheet for the two-surface model: (a) reverse loading parameters and (b)
reloading parameters.
966 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972

(i = 0, 1 or 2) are functions of the initial gap  din in general since they are dependent on the correspond-
ing accumulative strains.
The constants for the bounding surfaces and the loading gap function were obtained from the ten-
sion-compression test data and summarized in Tables 5 and 6. The ratios of the isotropic hardening
amount were determined to be ml = 0.0 and mb = 1.0 for all three materials. The dependence of param-
eters mi and ni defined in Eq. (28) was assumed to be piecewise linear functions and all values were
determined as shown in Figs. 19–21. Using the obtained material parameters, the tension-compres-
sion curves were numerically calculated using the two-surface model as shown in Fig. 22. From the
figure the two-surface model well depicts the hardening data including Bauschinger and transient
behavior. Since the permanent softening and non-symmetric reloading behaviors were defined as cor-
responding gap functions  dreverse and 
dreload in Eq. (28), both behaviors were also correctly captured in
the model. Therefore, it can be concluded that the two-surface model with well defined and measured
gap functions for the softening and non-symmetric reloading behaviors is a good representation for
the permanent softening and the non-symmetric reloading behavior as well as Bauschinger and tran-
sient behaviors.

4.3. Verification of the characterized material properties

In order to verify the characterized material properties, numerical FEM simulations were carried
out for the tension-compression test of the BH180 steel specimen with double-side fins. For the
0.8 mm thick BH180 steel sheet, four-node shell elements with reduced integration (ABAQUS type
S4R) were utilized for the sample and a full sized dogbone shaped model was considered as shown
in Fig. 10. The in-plane mesh sizes were 0.5 mm  0.5 mm and the commercial FEM package,

a 350
Parameters for the gap function

m1
300

250

200 m0
150

100 m2

50
515 520 525 530 535 540 545 550
Initial gap, δin (MPa)

b 700
Parameters for the gap function

600

500

400 n1

300

200 n0
100
n2
0
550 600 650 700 750 800
Initial gap, δin (MPa)

Fig. 20. Gap function parameters of the DP600 steel sheet for the two-surface model: (a) reverse loading parameters and (b)
reloading parameters.
 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972 967

ABAQUS/Standard with implicit integration, has been used for the calculation. To describe the material
property, the user subroutine UMAT was incorporated in the simulation, using the results from the
previous material characterization. Note that the modified Chaboche type combined isotropic-kine-
matic hardening model was considered with permanent softening and non-symmetric reloading
parameters in this specific verification example. For the comparison purpose, the pure isotropic hard-
ening model was also considered in this work.
From the FEM simulations, the histories of the crosshead displacement versus gauge-fins displace-
ment were obtained and compared with experimental results. Fig. 23a shows the crosshead curves
for the half cycled tension-compression test at several prestrain levels. Both material hardening models
showed good agreements with experimental data for the tension step. However, the pure isotropic hard-
ening model could not follow the non-monotonous behavior of gauge-fins displacement at the compres-
sion stage while the combined hardening law with permanent softening parameters showed a good
agreement with experimental data. In Fig. 23b, the FEM results for the three cycled tension-compression
test were plotted with the experimental results. The simulation result by using the combined hardening
law showed that the characterized material properties gave similar initial loading, reverse loading and
reloading behaviors with experimental results, especially at the first cycle. Therefore, it can be concluded
that the obtained material properties for the combined isotropic-kinematic hardening behavior with
permanent softening and non-symmetric reloading parameters were numerically well characterized.

5. Summary

In this work, a novel in-plane tension-compression device was introduced for sheet materials. This
double-wedge device is easy to be fabricated and able to cover the specimen surface completely.

a 140
Parameters for the gap function

m1
120

100

80

60 m2

40 m0

20
120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190
Initial gap, δin (MPa)

200
b
Parameters for the gap function

n1

150

100

n0
50
n2
0
200 220 240 260 280 300
Initial gap, δin (MPa)

Fig. 21. Gap function parameters of the AA6111-T4 sheet for the two-surface model: (a) reverse loading parameters and (b)
reloading parameters.
968 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972

a 500
Experiment 180B steel
400
Simulation

True stress (MPa)

300
200
100
0
-100
-200
-300
-400
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08
True strain

b 1000
Experiment DP600
800 Simulation
True stress (MPa)

600
400
200
0
-200
-400
-600
-800
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12
True strain

c 500
Experiment AA6111-T4
400
Simulation
True stress (MPa)

300
200
100
0
-100
-200
-300
-400
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12
True strain
Fig. 22. Calculated and measured hardening behaviors of base materials in tension-compression tests for the two-surface
model: (a) BH180 steel, (b) DP600 steel, and (c) AA6111-T4.

Therefore, potential buckling of sheet specimen can be prevented. Using the developed device, the
frictional force between the plate and specimen can be neglected for both tension and compression
tests. The through-the-thickness biaxial stress and plane strain condition were also discussed by using
the FEM simulation for the compression test. Once the Teflon film was attached on the plate, the mate-
rial status was not under the plane strain condition. Also, the stress ratio between the equivalent
stress and the compressive axial loading stress was less than 1.6%, so that the biaxial effect of the
through-the-thickness stress can be ignored in the tension-compression test using the double-wedge
device.
 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972 969

a 3.5

Crosshead displacement (mm)

3.0

2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0
Simulation - Iso Only
0.5 Simulation - Iso+Kine
Experiments
0.0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
Gauge fins displacement (mm)
b 3.0
Crosshead displacement (mm)

2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0 Experiments
Simulation - Iso
-0.5
Simulation - Iso+Kine
-1.0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6
Gauge fins displacement (mm)

Fig. 23. Crosshead displacement versus gauge-fins displacement curves: (a) half cycled test at 2%, 5%, 8% prestrain levels and (b)
three cycled test at 5% prestrain level.

In order to measure the strain correctly, the transmission type laser extensometer was utilized and
the double-side fins were considered in the specimen. Through FEM simulations, it was found that the
specimen with double-side fins resulted in a more uniform strain distribution than that from the spec-
imen with single-side fins. Test results showed that the double-wedge device can perform stable ten-
sion-compression (15% prestrain) and compression-tension (9% prestrain) tests for a sheet thickness of
0.8 mm and a good repeatability for a couple of cyclic tests.
In order to describe the Bauschinger effect and transient behavior during the tension-compression
test, the combined isotropic-kinematic hardening law based on the modified Chaboche model was uti-
lized with considering the softening behavior during the reverse loading. In this work, the non-sym-
metric reloading parameters for the cyclic reloading were newly considered into the model. In
addition to the modified Chaboche model, the two-surface model based on Dafalias-Popov and Kreig
concepts was also considered. To describe the non-symmetric reloading behavior, the reloading gap
function was newly introduced in the two-surface model.
For three base materials, BH180, DP600 steel and AA6111-T4 sheets, the uni-axial tension-com-
pression tests were performed using the developed double-wedge fixture. From the tests, DP600 steel
showed only kinematic hardening behavior. Both BH180 and DP600 steel sheets showed the perma-
nent softening behavior during the reverse loading while AA6111-T4 sheet does not. The non-sym-
metric reloading behavior was observed for all three materials. Through the material
characterization, hardening parameters were determined and numerical results were compared with
the experimental cyclic curves. Both the combined isotropic-kinematic hardening law and the two-
surface model successfully described the hardening behavior including the Bauschinger effect and
transient behavior with the permanent softening during reverse loading and the non-symmetric tran-
970 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972

sient behavior during reloading stage. The characterized material properties were also verified by
comparing the crosshead curves with the experimental results through the tension-compression
FEM simulations.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank General Motors and Department of Energy for its support. This
work was also supported by the Korea Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government
(MOEHRD) (KRF-2006-352-D00016, Lee). The work was also partially supported by the Korea Science
and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) through the SRC/ERC Program of MOST/KOSEF R11-2005-065
(Chung).

Appendix A. The transparent wedge device for the optical measurement system

Because the in-plane tension-compression device to prevent the buckling during the tension-com-
pression test covers all the area of the specimen, it is hard to measure the strain by using the common
displacement measurement tools such as the regular mechanical-based extensometer. For the double-
wedge device made of aluminum blocks, the axial strain can be measured by utilizing the transmission
type laser extensometer. In order to measure the strain, the double-side fins were designed onto the
specimen. If the reflection type laser extensometer is considered, the strain can be measured by
attaching the reflecting tape onto gauge-fins.
In addition to the laser extensometer, other optical measurement tools such as the image capturing
and correlation system are applicable to gauge the strain. Therefore, it can be useful for the optical
measurement system to provide the visibility of the specimen during the compression test. One meth-
od to make the specimen visible is to utilize the transparent blocks instead of the metal. Following the

Fig. A1. Transparent double-wedge device: (a) real fixture and (b) inner picture.
 J. Cao et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 25 (2009) 942–972 971

developed aluminum double-wedge design, a transparent wedge device has been developed as shown
in Fig. A1. In order to meet the needs of enough strength as well as transparency, the polycarbonate
blocks were fabricated. Note that the key and sliding slots are located at both ends of the wedge blocks
for keeping the center region transparent. Due to the same reason for the transparency of the center
region, two springs were introduced on each front surface and the positions of all holes were carefully
determined. Based on these preliminary design concepts, the transparent in-plane double-wedge de-
vice can be an alternative design of the double-wedge device so that the direct measurement of the
strain for the tension-compression tests is possible using methods such as the optical strain correla-
tion method, the transmission type laser extensometer or the reflection type laser extensometer.

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