Polycrystalline modeling of the cyclic hardening/softening behavior of an austenitic–ferritic stainless steel

As other metallic materials, in low-cycle fatigue, duplex stainless steels (DSS) exhibit a cyclic hardening, followed by a cyclic softening, before stabilization of the stress. In order to simulate the cyclic hardening/softening curves in low-cycle fatigue of an austenitic–ferritic or duplex stainless steel (DSS), a new polycrystalline model is proposed. The polycrystalline model developed by Cailletaud, 1992 and Pilvin, 1990 and modified by Hoc and Forest (2001) was previously extended in Evrard et al. (2008) in order to take into account the bi-phased character of the DSS. This model correctly accounts for the cyclic hardening, but it is not able to simulate the cyclic softening, consequently, stresses at the stabilized state are overestimated. TEM observations of the dislocation structures built during a cyclic uniaxial tension/compression test show that, during the cyclic hardening, planar arrangements are observed in austenitic grains and no significant evolution is observed during the subsequent cyclic softening and stabilization stage. On the contrary, in ferritic grains, dislocations are homogeneously distributed during cyclic hardening, and the microstructure evolves during the subsequent cyclic softening and stabilization stage. Dislocation structures build progressively, consisting of hard zones or walls, separated by soft zones or channels. We propose to model the cyclic softening through dislocation structure evolution within ferritic grains. The single crystal law used by Hoc and Forest (2001) is modified in order to take into account the heterogeneous distribution of dislocations in the ferrite. Numerical simulations are compared with experimental data. A good agreement is observed between experimental and calculated hardening/softening curves and stabilized hysteresis loops.