Numerical study of strain localisation in plane strain thermo-viscoplastic solids under dynamic conditions

In this work numerical simulations on plane strain thermo-viscoplastic solids under dynamic conditions have been performed. The thermal effects have been added to the viscoplastic model through the heat generated by the plastic work and the thermal softening. The scope is to study if the thermal coupling effects are able to regularise the mesh sensitiviy produced by the consideration of strain or thermal softening in the material law. It is shown how heat conduction leads to mesh independent problems in the presence of thermal softening but, by itself, it is not able to regularise the cases with strain softening.