Characterization of dynamic hardening behavior using acceleration information

Crash analysis simulation is very important in automotive industry to assess automotive crashworthiness and safety. In the FE simulation, accurate dynamic hardening behavior should be used as input data to provide reliable results. But, it is difficult to obtain precise hardening properties at intermediate or high strain rates due to inaccurate measurement of load caused by the inertial effect. In this study, a new methodology was applied to retrieve dynamic strain hardening properties of sheet metal specimens. The virtual fields method (VFM) was adopted as an inverse method to identify hardening parameters without load information. As an initial study, Swift model for a rate independent hardening law was selected for an elasto-plastic constitutive model. In order to validate the proposed methodology in the experiments, a new type of high speed tensile tester for sheet metal specimens was built and high speed tensile tests were performed. Digital image correlation technique using a high-speed camera was utilized to measure strain and acceleration fields so that the identification is carried out from the measured quantities. The validation of the proposed VFM identification procedure using the acceleration will be performed by comparing with the conventional procedure using a load-cell.