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Experimental Methodology for Obtaining the Flow Curve of Sheet Materials in

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Article in steel research international · February 2013

DOI: 10.1002/srin.201200104

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Experimental Methodology for Obtaining the Flow

FULL PAPER

Curve of Sheet Materials in a Wide Range of Strains

Xincun Zhuang, Zhen Zhao,
Hongye Li, and Hua Xiang

An experimental approach for determining the stress–strain curve over a large range of
strains through tensile test is introduced. The novel aspect of the proposed approach is to
apply different degrees of cold working on the sheet metal specimens before tensile test.
By adding the pre-strain derived from cold working to the strain from tensile test, the
corresponding stress–strain curves can be shifted to large strains. Since the variation
trend of these curves is in high coincidence with the results from compression test, it is
convinced that the stress–strain curve of tensile test over a large range of strains can be
experimentally extrapolated based on such an approach, especially aiming at medium-
thick sheet metal. Based on the tensile test results, five different extrapolation models
were evaluated with respect to different sampling dataset. It was revealed that the true
stress–plastic strain curve over a given strain range could be approximated well by the
extrapolation models of Ludwik, Ghosh, and Hocket-Sherby based on sampling data points
of standard tensile test combined with a prescribed data point from tensile test after cold
working.

1. Introduction motive sheet metal panels and fine-blanking parts, the

The description of how the material hardens with respect
to plastic deformation is one of the most important com-
ponents for the simulation and optimization of the sheet
metal forming processes. This is described mainly by the
true stress–strain curves, which are also called flow curves.
The most common method for obtaining the flow curve is
the uniaxial tensile test for which an extensometer is fixed
to a dog-bone shaped specimen in order to measure the
extension of the reduced section within a given gauge
length.[1] However, due to the existence of necking
phenomenon during the tensile test, it is difficult to obtain
the curve for a large range of strains exceeding the strain for
the tensile strength (normally up to 12–24% for most steel
sheet metal).
If the effective strain levels featured in successful sheet
metal forming processes were within the uniform strain
range, then the traditional uniaxial tensile test could suf-
fice. However, in many industrial sheet metal stamping
and forming processes, particularly those for many auto-
[
] X. Zhuang, Dr. Z. Zhao, H. Li, H. Xiang
Institute of Forming Technology and Equipment,
School of Materials Science and Engineering,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China
Email: zzhao@sjtu.edu.cn
DOI: 10.1002/srin.201200104
effective strain would be far more than 24%. Therefore,
it follows that the flow curve used in the material model in
many industrial sheet metal forming simulations should
accommodate effective strain levels well beyond 24%.
In order to achieve a large range of flow curve, generally
three ways were attempted to be made, named as exper-
imental, analytical, and numerical methods, respectively.
From the experimental point of view, it is possible to obtain
the flow curve of sheet metal by tensile test, bulge test,
layer compression test, and plain strain compression test
as well as shear test. Matin and Smith[2] used a force–area
measurement method by which the area cross-section of
the necked region during the tensile test is measured. This
area in conjunction with the associated applied tensile
force is used to compute the true axial normal stress.
While the approach could lead to reasonably accurate
results, the error derived from measurement can be rela-
tively high. Mirone[3] obtained equivalent stress seq by an
empirical correction factor, which was derived from the
post-necking strain. This correction did not require
measurement of current diameter at the necking zone,
but the validity of the estimated seq and relevance for other
materials is still unclear. Dziallach et al.[4] and Smith
et al.[5] proposed a new experimental approach for deter-
mining the sheet metal flow curve for diffuse necking
deformation through the hydraulic bulge expansion
(HBE) test. The proposed method can determine the dif-
fuse necking portion of the flow curve without employing

146 steel research int. 84 (2013) No. 2 ß 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
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cumbersome techniques associated with uniaxial tensile
test methods, but having to assume a yield surface a prior,
as well as membrane behavior in the work piece. Merklein
and Kuppert[6] presented an exhaustive description of the
experimental procedure and the corresponding evaluation
methodology for layer compression test, taking the plastic
anisotropy behavior of the test materials and the develop-
ment of a novel setup into account. With this method, the
flow curve reaches higher strain values in comparison to
the conventional tensile test. Plane strain compression
test, put to practical use by Ford,[7] is used to determine
the flow curve of a material by the compression of
rectangular specimen between two accurately aligned
plates. With the aid of a correction factor considering
the effects of friction, lubrication, specimen size, etc.,
the flow curve can be calculated. Aiming at the small,
miniaturized specimen, Kopp and van Putten[8] proposed
a multi-layer plane strain compression test to calculate the
corresponding flow curve. Bouvier et al.[9] applied the
shear method, i.e., tensile loads are applied such that
the specimen deforms in shear. The shear strain is deter-
mined through deformed grid pattern deformations. To
compute the flow curve, a yield surface must be assumed.
In addition to the directly experimental methods, sev-
eral analytical equations have been used to describe the
experimental stress–strain curves, involves the extension of
a line in effective stress–strain space from the uniform
strain limit to a predefined diffuse strain limit. Kleemola
and Nieminen[10] investigated the applicability of the
Ludwik, Hollomon, Swift, and Voce equations in describing
the stress–strain curves of metals, and found that for
describing the stress–strain curves of annealed and
deformed copper, the Voce equation is best. The less com-
plex Hollomon equation is better than the Voce equation
for the description of the curves of steel. Kamaya and
Kawakubo[11] proposed that using the power law equation,
the stress–strain curve including the post-necking strain
can be estimated by extrapolating the curve estimated
from the before-necking strain. Dziallach et al.[4] evaluated
the validity of Hollomon, Ghosh, Voce, and Hockett-
Sherby equations for three auto body steels (DP600,
DX54, and TRIP700) by comparing the flow curves from
the bulge test with the extrapolated flow curve from tensile
tests. While this extrapolation method is very fast and
inexpensive, there is very little physical justification for it.
With the rapid development of numerical simulation
method, finite element analysis (FEA) together with inverse
methodology was widely used to estimate the flow curve
with large strain range. Joun et al.[12] applied an iteration
process to minimize the error in the nominal stress–strain
relation between the experimental results and those by
FEA, which simulated the post-necking behavior in the
tensile test. In this approach, when FEA was appropriate
for simulating the material behavior, an accurate value of
seq could be obtained and the validity of the obtained curve
was shown directly by FEA. However, this approach
required a constitutive model for simulating the defor-
ß 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
FULL PAPER
mation including the necking. Zhang et al.[13,14] carried
out an extension three-dimensional numerical study on
the diffuse necking behavior of tensile specimens made of
anisotropic materials with rectangular cross-section, and
established an approximate relation between the area
reduction of the minimum cross-section and the measured
thickness reduction. And then a method was proposed, in
which the material flow curve can be directly calculated
from the load versus thickness reduction curve. Cabezas
and Celentano[15] applied Bridgman’s correction in order
to obtain seq at the necking zone. They validated the
obtained true stress–strain curve by comparing it with
the FEA results of the tensile test. However, in these tech-
niques, only a few parameters could be identified by
assuming a constitutive equation for the stress–strain
curve in order to maintain the robustness of the inverse
analysis. Kamaya and Kawakubo[11] proposed a procedure
for determining the stress–strain curve including post-
necking strain based on tensile test with hourglass type
specimens, and the stress–strain curves were identified
through an iteration process using FEA. They introduced
tensile test with the specimens of different degrees of
cold working to investigate the validity of the results
derived from this procedure.
In this study, an attempt was made to obtain the true
stress–strain curve including the post-necking strain
by introducing various degrees of cold working and then
performing tensile test, which can be named as experimen-
tal extrapolation of true stress–strain curve. In addition,
compression tests with small cylinder specimens cut
from sheet material along the rolling direction were per-
formed to estimate the validity of the above-mentioned
methodology. Thereafter, several commonly used extra-
polation models were investigated based on the flow
curve obtained by the above-mentioned experimental
extrapolation.
2. Theoretical and Experimental
Background
2.1. Numerical Extrapolation of True Stress–Strain Curve
For the simulation of sheet metal forming processes, the
flow curves are generally approximated based on standard
tensile test and then extrapolated using different math-
ematical or physical models, as shown in Table 1. There are
two common mathematical description of the work hard-
ening phenomenon. The equations of Hollomon, Ludwik,
and Ghosh are of analogous power law relationship
between the stress and the amount of plastic strain, while
the equations of Voce and Hockett-Sherby are saturated
models. In these equations, s and ep are the true stress and
true plastic strain, respectively, and the other parameters
are defined as constants.
steel research int. 84 (2013) No. 2 147

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Equation
Hollomon [Hol] s ¼ K "np
Ludwik [Lud] s ¼ s0 þ
Ghosh [Gho] s ¼ Að"p þ BÞn  C
Voce [Voc] s ¼ s 0 þ Að1  expðK "p ÞÞ
Hockett-Sherby [H-S] s ¼ s 0 þ Að1 
Table 1. Different extrapolation models for flow curve.
In addition to the above-mentioned extrapolation
models, Morrison[16] introduced the double-n method
for steels which consists of the use of two Hollomon
equations. Man et al.[17] described the tensile curves of
copper using a similar method, but using two equations
of type. Koc and Štok[18] introduced the double Voce
equations to extrapolate the flow curve after necking.
This kind of analysis is based on the assumption
that a change in deformation mechanism occurs during
deformation. Here in this study such a condition was not
included.
2.2. Experimental Extrapolation of True Stress–Strain
Curve
According to the previous work,[19] for the before-necking
strain the relationship between the true stress and effective
strain was the same for the cold worked material. And
Kamaya and Kawakubo[11] revealed that the same was
true for the post-necking strain. Therefore, it is possible
for the medium-thick sheet metal to extrapolate the flow
curve experimentally by performing sheet metal tensile
test after being applied to various degrees of cold working.
A schematic diagram of the experimental extrapolation is
shown in Figure 1, and the step-wise procedure can be
summarized as follows.
Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the experimental extrapolation.
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Note
Power law
K "np
Saturated
expðK "np ÞÞ
Step 1: Perform uniaxial tensile test with specimen of
original thickness, and record the corresponding force-
displacement curve. The tensile specimen is taken along
the rolling direction.
Step 2: Apply specified degree of cold working to the
sheet metal by cold rolling process at room temperature.
No heat treatment will be carried out after that so as to
preserve the hardening effect of cold rolled material. The
specified degree of cold working applied can be denoted
as equivalent plastic strain epre calculated by Equation 1,
where eT ¼ ln(h0/h1), and h0 is the original sheet metal
thickness, h1 is sheet metal thickness after rolling.
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
2 2 2
"pre ¼ ½" þ ð"T Þ2  ¼ pffiffiffi j"T j (1)
3 T 3
Step 3: Cut the tensile test specimen from the cold rolled
sheet metal along the rolling direction by wire cutting. The
size of the specimen is determined according to the
standard.
Step 4: Perform uniaxial tensile test with specimen
obtained in step 3, and record the force-displacement
curve. Go back to step 2 or go forward to step 5 till enough
sample records are collected.
Step 5: Transform the force-displacement curve of each
specimen to the true stress–plastic strain curve referring to
the method in Section 2.3. For the specimens subjected to
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cold working, only the data points of tensile strength and
corresponding plastic strain Pi (Rm,i, ep,i) are collected. The
reason why choose these data points will be explained in
the following discussion.
Step 6: Shift the data points from Pi (Rm,i, ep,i) to
Pi0 ðRm;i ; "pre;i þ "p;i Þ. Then combined with the true stress–
plastic strain curve obtained from the specimen of original
thickness, the true stress versus plastic strain curve over a
large range of strains can be achieved.
2.3. Transform of True Stress–Plastic Strain Curve
The power law, Ludwik equation and Hockett-Sherby
model are some of the examples of the constitutive laws
used for describing the plastic behavior where true stress is
the function of plastic strain, and these equations are valid
only from the beginning of the plastic flow.[20] Therefore, it
is necessary to obtain the true stress–plastic strain data
from the force-displacement curve generated during the
testing, before evaluating the material constants for these
models. As per the work related to various data processing
methods in simple uni-axial compression testing,[21] three
possible methods to obtain the true stress–plastic strain
data from the raw force-displacement data will lead to
different maximum plastic strain and over-estimation of
true stress at a particular true plastic strain. By comparing
with the compression testing results, the authors suggested
to get the true stress–plastic strain curve by first converting
the force-displacement curve to engineering stress–strain
curve and subsequently to true stress–strain curve, and
then removing the elastic region from the true stress–strain
curve. From this point of view, the similar data processing
method was used to obtain the corresponding true stress–
plastic strain curve from the force-displacement curve of
tensile test in this study.
FULL PAPER
Young’s modulus, E, can be calculated by dividing the
tensile stress by the tensile strain in the elastic (initial,
linear) portion of the stress–strain curve:
s F=A0 FL0
E¼ ¼ ¼ (7)
" DL=L0 A0 DL
where F is the force exerted on an object under tension; A0
the original cross-sectional area through which the force is
applied; DL the amount by which the length of the object
changes; L0 the original length of the object.
Elastic strain (ee) is given by:
s
"e ¼ (8)
E
Then plastic strain (ep) can be calculated by minus elastic
strain from total true strain:
"p ¼ "t  "e (9)
2.4. Experiments
Following the experimental procedure proposed in Section
2.2, series of tensile test specimens with rectangular cross-
section, including three steel C15E (EN), C20E (EN), and
SNCM220 (JIS), were tested on a universal testing machine
Zwick/Roell Z100. The original thicknesses (h0) of different
materials are listed in Table 2. In addition, in order to apply
different degrees of cold working (epre), the sheet metal was
suffered from cold rolling process to achieve definite thick-
ness (h1), as shown in Table 2. The value of epre was
calculated according to Equation 1 mentioned-above.
The specimens were designed referring to the testing
standard of ASTM-E8 and taken along the sheet metal
rolling direction.

Material h0 h1 epre Material h0 h1 epre Material h0 h1 epre

[mm] [mm] [mm] [mm] [mm] [mm]

C15E 5 4.55 0.109 C20E 4 3.71 0.087 SNCM220 4 3.71 0.087

4.43 0.140 3.66 0.103 3.61 0.118
4.33 0.166 3.58 0.128 3.54 0.141
3.89 0.290 3.31 0.219 3.24 0.243
3.52 0.405 3.0 0.332 3.0 0.332
3.0 0.590 2.86 0.387 2.85 0.391
2.67 0.724 2.48 0.552 2.30 0.639
2.40 0.848 2.15 0.717 2.15 0.717
2.0 1.058 2.0 0.800 2.0 0.800

Table 2. Different testing materials suffered from various degrees of cold working.

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Figure 2. Cylinder compression test specimen.

Besides the standard tensile test, compression test is the other curves (corresponding to T ¼ 3.89, 3.52, and
also widely used to estimate the flow curve, however, with 2.67 mm, respectively), it shows high approximability.
bulk materials rather than sheet materials. Since the strain And most important, the data points corresponding to
range available from compression test is larger than the tensile strength of these curves are in high coincidence
one of tensile test, even up to one, specific cylinder com- with the compression test results. Concerning the other
pression test specimens will be cut from the sheet metal two materials (C20E and SNCM220), the same feature
along the rolling direction as shown in Figure 2, so as to could also be observed as shown in Figure 4. However,
compare the calculated flow curve with the ones of tensile due to the buckling phenomenon during the compression
test after cold rolling in this study. For C15E material, the test with too small specimens, the available strain range is
height of cylinder compression test specimen is 8 mm, and limited. For this case, layer compression test could be a
the diameter is 4 mm. While for C20E and SNCM220, the solution to estimate the flow curve of large strain range, but
height is 6 mm, and the diameter is 3 mm. As per with carefully defined friction between different layers as
the methodology proposed by Parteder and Bünten,[22] well as the anisotropy of sheet materials.
the flow curve of compression test can be correctively All in all, the influence of back stress hardening could be
obtained. regarded as relatively small and can be probably ignored
for this case. In addition, viewing these curves, a phenom-
enon of quick increase of flow stress from yield stress to the
value obtained in pre-straining is obvious, which is in
accordance with Orowan’s explanation. With the increase
3. Results and Discussion of pre-strain, such a feature is more obvious, while the
duration of latter section of the curve becomes shorter
3.1. Stress–Plastic Strain Curve of after-Rolled Specimen and shorter. Therefore, data points of tensile strength
and corresponding plastic strain were used as sample
Since cold rolling was performed before tensile test, points for the experimental extrapolation of flow curve
Bauschinger effect should be taken into consideration to over large range of strains in this study.
some extent. According to Orowan’s[23] dislocation theory,
there are two generalized types of obstacles to slip namely
strong obstacles and permeable obstacles. The former are
expected to promote back stress hardening which gives rise
to permanent softening, and on the other hand, an array of
permeable obstacles could produce low initial flow
strength in the reverse direction without causing appreci-
able permanent softening. So on stress reversal, the flow
stress would increase rapidly toward the value obtained in
pre-straining since the dislocations would encounter
another row of closely spaced obstacles.
Figure 3 shows the true stress–plastic strain curves
obtained from the tensile test with respect to sheet metal
C15E after cold rolling to different target thickness, as well
as the true stress–plastic strain curve obtained from the
compression test. Each curve of tensile test of cold rolling
was offset by different pre-strain epre,i, corresponding to the
previous cold rolling deformation. Comparing the curves
of T ¼ 4.55, 4.43, and 4.33 mm, it can be found that the
latter sections of these curves were almost identical. Figure 3. True stress–plastic strain curves of specimens after
Viewing the variation tendency of the latter sections of cold rolling (Material: C15E).

150 steel research int. 84 (2013) No. 2 ß 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
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Figure 4. True stress–plastic strain curves of specimens after cold rolling (Material: C20E and SNCM220).

3.2. Comparison of Different Mathematical or

Physical Models

Flow curves obtained from experimental extrapolation

were further compared to five extrapolation models for
flow curves from tensile test, as shown in Figure 5. The
parameters of each extrapolation model were fitted based
on about 40 sampling data points, using nonlinear least
square regression provided by MATLAB software. The
sampling data points were extracted from the results of
tensile test with equal interval. With the aid of the fixed
extrapolation models, flow curves of wide range of plastic
strain corresponding to different materials can be easily
calculated.
Viewing these curves in Figure 5, the different extrapol-
ation models cover a range of about 200–300 MPa at high
strains, usually delivering high values with the [Lud]
equation and low values with the [Voc] equation, even if
they seem to fit experimental data of standard tensile test
very closely. In a way, it points out the importance of
experimental determination of flow curves at high strains.
Comparing with the data points obtained from tensile test
after cold rolling, the flow curves of experimental extra-
polation for the steels C15E and C20E are relatively con-
sistent with the ones from the equation of [Lud], whereas
the steel SNCM220 shows a good congruence with the
model by [Goh]. In contrast to the power law models,
the saturated models give worse approximation of flow
stress over large range of strains. According to the flow
curve with respect to tensile test after cold rolling, the
hardening process is more or less shorter, especially for
the steel SNCM220. Therefore, the sum of pre-strain and Figure 5. Comparison of flow curves from extrapolation models
corresponding plastic strain relative to tensile strength is and experimental extrapolation a) C15E, b) C20E, and c)
likely to lie in the strain range of standard tensile test for SNCM220.

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some data points, as shown in Figure 5c. The coincidence
between these data points and the flow curve obtained
from standard tensile test makes further deal with the
conclusion of same variation tendency for different flow
curves in the above-mentioned section.
3.3. Influence of Different Sampling Dataset
According to the basic principle of nonlinear least square
method, each data point provides equally precise infor-
mation about the deterministic part of the total process
variation. So once all the data points of tensile test after
cold rolling combined with sampling dataset of standard
tensile test are defined as a new sampling dataset, to be
used to determine the values of the parameters included in
the extrapolation models, flow curves calculated by these
models will be more or less closer to the actual ones.
However, this is almost never the case in real applications
to prepare so many data points of tensile test after cold
rolling. Therefore, in this section different sampling data-
sets of smaller scale were investigated, so as to find a
comprising way for the model fitting.
Table 3 shows the actual composition of different
sampling datasets used in this study. It is the combination
of sampling dataset of standard tensile test with one data
point of tensile test after cold rolling. For different
sampling datasets, the selected data point of tensile test
after cold rolling is different. Since the number of data
points from tensile test after cold rolling is less than the
ones of standard tensile test, the influence of data points
from tensile test after cold rolling is probably weakened to
some extent. On account of this issue, weighted nonlinear
least squares regression is likely to be a solution. However,
this method is dependent on the assumption that the
weights are known exactly. Therefore, the procedure that
treats all the data points equally was adopted in this study.
Table 4 lists the stability index r2 of nonlinear least
square corresponding to each extrapolation model for
different materials with respect to different sampling data-
sets. An r2 of 1.0 indicates that the regression line perfectly
fits the data. Regarding the determined stability index r2
in Table 4, the extrapolation models by [Gho], [Lud],
and [H-S] show the best correspondence between the
computed data points and the measured ones, no matter
what sampling dataset is. The [Hol] equation gives a very
incorrect measure of the residual ductility of a material

Sampling dataset Material Composition of sampling dataset Number of data points

name
(1) (2)

S1 C15E (1) Sampling dataset of standard tensile test 42 1

C20E 36
SNCM220 (2) Pi0 ðRm;i ; "pre;i þ "p;i Þ; i ¼ 5, 43
S2 C15E (1) Sampling dataset of standard tensile test 42 1
C20E 36
SNCM220 (2) Pi0 ðRm;i ; "pre;i þ "p;i Þ; i¼9 43

Table 3. Actual composition of different sampling dataset.

Sampling dataset Material Stability index r2

[Hol] [Lud] [Gho] [Voc] [H-S]

S1 C15E 0.9719 0.9980 0.9980 0.9740 0.9979

C20E 0.9618 0.9977 0.9983 0.9721 0.9974
SNCM220 0.9617 0.9985 0.9990 0.9813 0.9987
S2 C15E 0.9604 0.9990 0.9991 0.9745 0.9989
C20E 0.9366 0.9989 0.9993 0.9720 0.9988
SNCM220 0.9727 0.9994 0.9996 0.9785 0.9995

Table 4. Stability index r2 of nonlinear curve fitting with different extrapolation models.

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Figure 6. Fitting curves of SNCM220 on the basis of sampling
dataset S1.
Figure 7. Fitting curves of SNCM220 on the basis of sampling
dataset S2.
especially when applied to the analysis of the stress–strain
curves of deformed specimens. However, the less complex
[Hol] equation is better than the [Voc] equation for the
description of the curves of steel.
In addition, Figure 6 shows the flow curves of SNCM220
calculated based on the fitted extrapolation models with
regard to sampling dataset S1. In conformity with the
results of stability index r2, within the plastic strain corre-
sponding to sampling data point rightmost, the extrapol-
ation models by [Gho], [Lud], and [H-S] give much better
coincidence with the experimental data points obtained
from the tensile test after cold rolling. However, beyond the
maximum plastic strain corresponding to sampling data
point rightmost, the coincidence is not so good. Viewing
the flow curves of SNCM220 shown in Figure 7, which were
calculated based on the fitted extrapolation models of
[Gho], [Lud], and [H-S] on the basis of sampling dataset
S2, they are in good agreement with the experimental data
points obtained from the tensile test after cold rolling. Such
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Figure 8. Fitting curves calculated based on different extrapol-
ation models a) C15E b) C20E.
a phenomenon can also be observed with respect to the
calculated flow curves of C15E and C20E, as shown
in Figure 8. Therefore, it can be concluded that flow curve
over a given strain range is likely to be calculated by
extrapolation models of [Gho], [Lud], and [H-S], fitted
based on the sampling dataset of standard tensile test
combined with another tensile test after cold rolling.
However, the pre-strain derived from cold rolling should
be close to the maximum strain of the given strain range.
4. Conclusions
An experimental approach for determining the stress–
strain curve over a large range of strains through tensile
test was performed on three different steels. It is shown
that the variation tendency of the stress–strain curves for
different degrees of cold working were almost identical
when pre-strain derived from cold rolling was added,
which implies that the methodology can be applied to
obtain stress–strain curve over large range of strains.
Comparing the fitting curves of five extrapolation models
steel research int. 84 (2013) No. 2 153

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based on the results of standard tensile test, there are
remarkable differences among them, which may cause
uncertainties in the simulation results. However, by using
the sampling dataset of standard tensile test combined with
a prescribed data point from tensile test after cold working,
the true stress–plastic strain curve over a given strain range
could probably be approximated by the extrapolation
models of Ludwik, Ghosh, and Hocket-Sherby under the
condition of treating all the data points equally. Therefore,
the proposed methodology offers two advantages. On the
one hand, the flow curves can be directly used as input data
for simulation, and on the other hand, they can be used to
find the proper extrapolation model for the material.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to express thanks to National Natural
Science Foundation (no. 50975175, no.51105250) and
National Science and Technology Specific Projects (no.
2011ZX04016-051) of China for the financial assistant to
this study.
Received: April 21, 2012;
Published online: August 24, 2012
Keywords: mechanical characterization; steel; plasticity;
hardening
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