Dynamic strain aging and related instabilities: experimental, theoretical and numerical aspects

Experimental data from uniaxial tensile tests on smooth and notched specimens of aluminium alloy 5083-H116 show that the material exhibits negative strain-rate sensitivity for strain rates within a certain range. The negative strain-rate dependence, which is attributed to dynamic strain aging, leads to serrated stress–strain curves, discontinuous plastic flow and propagating deformation bands during plastic straining (also denoted as the Portevin–Le Chatelier effect). Band analysis and linear perturbation analysis are performed using simple elastic-viscoplastic constitutive equations that include negative strain-rate sensitivity in a simplified manner. The negative strain-rate sensitivity allows for jumps in the plastic strain rate, which in turn permits the existence of localisation bands for the elastic-viscoplastic model. The simple elastic-viscoplastic constitutive model has been implemented in LS-DYNA, and non-linear finite element simulations of smooth and notched tensile test specimens are performed, allowing more detailed investigations into the effects of the negative strain-rate sensitivity on the material's behaviour.