Measurements of Bauschinger effect and transient behavior of a quenched and partitioned advanced high strength steel

In recent decades, the needs for new advanced high strength steels (AHSS) with high ductility and strength have rapidly increased to achieve the targets of more fuel-efficient and safer vehicles in automotive industry. However, several undesirable phenomena are experimentally observed during the forming of such materials, particularly with complex loading and large plastic deformation. Springback is one of the most important problems that should be compensated in sheet metal forming process. In this paper, we investigated the hardening behavior of a Q&P (quench and partitioning) steel designated by QP980CR, which is a new third generation advance high strength steel, from the Baosteel Group Corp. in Shanghai, China. The uni-axial tensile and cyclic simple shear tests were conducted. The uni-axial tensile tests were performed on the specimens at 0°, 45° and 90° to rolling direction (RD). The flow stress and transverse strain evolution were obtained in view of the digital image correlation (DIC) measurement. The plastic anisotropy was optimized from the uni-axial tensile tests and thereafter incorporated into the simulations of cyclic simple shear tests. The cyclic simple shear tests were conducted with three prestrains to measure the Bauschinger effect, transient behavior and permanent softening, and to determine the material parameters of the combined isotropic-kinematic hardening model.