Comparative study of analytical expressions for the modelling of stainless steel behaviour

• Differences among stainless steel material models are analysed.
• A computer programme which determines material parameters from any experimental data is developed.
• Existing equations for the determination of material parameters are checked.
• Some new expressions providing more accurate material parameter values are proposed.

During the last decades, various material models have been proposed describing stainless steel nonlinear behaviour through different parameters. The differences among these models are analysed herein using experimental data of different stainless steel types. An interactive computer programme, usable for any series of experimental data, is developed and presented: the procedure for the determination of Young׳s modulus (E0) is pointed out and the least-square adjustment to optimize the strain-hardening exponents of different material models is described. Different expressions for the calculation of the parameters, proposed by several authors and used in a variety of codes, are analysed and new ones are proposed.