On free energy-based formulations for kinematic hardening and the decomposition F = fpfe

Within the framework of linear plasticity, based on additive decomposition of the linear strain tensor, kinematical hardening can be described by means of extended potentials. The method is elegant and avoids the need for evolution equations. The extension of small strain formulations to the finite strain case, which is based on the multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient into elastic and inelastic parts, proved not straight forward. Specifically, the symmetry of the resulting back stress remained elusive. In this paper, a free energy-based formulation incorporating the effect of kinematic hardening is proposed. The formulation is able to reproduce symmetric expressions for the back stress while incorporating the multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient. Kinematic hardening is combined with isotropic hardening where an associative flow rule and von Mises yield criterion are applied. It is shown that the symmetry of the back stress is strongly related to its treatment as a truly spatial tensor, where contraction operations are to be conducted using the current metric. The latter depends naturally on the deformation gradient itself. Various numerical examples are presented.