Phenomenological Modelling of Cyclic Plasticity

The stress-strain behaviour of metals under a cyclic loading is very miscellaneous and needs an individual approach for different metallic materials. There are many different models that have been developed for the case of cyclic plasticity. This chapter will address only so called phenomenological models, which are based purely on the observed behaviour of materials. The second section of this chapter describes the main experimental observations of cyclic plasticity for metals. Material models development for the correct description of particular phenomenon of cyclic plasticity is complicated by such effects as cyclic hardening/softening and cyclic creep (also called ratcheting). Effect of cyclic hardening/softening corresponds to hardening or softening of material response, more accurately to decreasing/increasing resistance to deformation of material subjected to cyclic loading. Some materials show very strong cyclic softening/hardening (stainless steels, copper, etc.), others less pronounced (medium carbon steels). The material can show cyclic hardening/softening behaviour during force controlled or strain controlled loading. On the contrary, the cyclic creep phenomenon can arise only under force controlled loading. The cyclic creep can be defined as accumulation of any plastic strain component with increasing number of cycles and can influence the fatigue life of mechanical parts due to the exhaustion of plastic ability of material earlier than the initiation of fatigue crack caused by low-cycle fatigue is started.


Introduction
The stress-strain behaviour of metals under a cyclic loading is very miscellaneous and needs an individual approach for different metallic materials. There are many different models that have been developed for the case of cyclic plasticity. This chapter will address only so called phenomenological models, which are based purely on the observed behaviour of materials. The second section of this chapter describes the main experimental observations of cyclic plasticity for metals. Material models development for the correct description of particular phenomenon of cyclic plasticity is complicated by such effects as cyclic hardening/softening and cyclic creep (also called ratcheting). Effect of cyclic hardening/softening corresponds to hardening or softening of material response, more accurately to decreasing/increasing resistance to deformation of material subjected to cyclic loading. Some materials show very strong cyclic softening/hardening (stainless steels, copper, etc.), others less pronounced (medium carbon steels). The material can show cyclic hardening/softening behaviour during force controlled or strain controlled loading. On the contrary, the cyclic creep phenomenon can arise only under force controlled loading. The cyclic creep can be defined as accumulation of any plastic strain component with increasing number of cycles and can influence the fatigue life of mechanical parts due to the exhaustion of plastic ability of material earlier than the initiation of fatigue crack caused by low-cycle fatigue is started.
The third section of this chapter deals with the cyclic plasticity models included in the most popular Finite Element packages (Ansys, Abaqus, MSC.Nastran/Marc). A particular attention is paid to the calibration of classical nonlinear kinematic hardening models. Stressstrain behaviour of materials may be significantly different for proportional and non proportional loading, i.e. loading which leads to the rotation of principal stresses. In case of stainless steels an additional hardening occurs under non proportional loading. This additional hardening is investigated mostly under tension/torsion loading using the circular, elliptical, cross, star and other loading path shapes. Classical cyclic plasticity models implemented in the commercial Finite Element software are not able to describe well the non proportional hardening and correct prediction of multiaxial ratcheting is also problematic. This problem can be solved by implementation of more complex cyclic plasticity model to a FE code. As a conclusion there are briefly summarized phenomenological modelling theories of ratcheting. The main attention is focused on the most progressive group of cyclic plasticity models with a one yield surface only. The AbdelKarim-Ohno model is also described, which gives very good prediction of ratcheting under uniaxial as well as multiaxial loading.
Comparison of the AbdelKarim-Ohno model and classical models is presented through simulations in the fourth section. Numerical analyses were performed for various uniaxial and multiaxial loading cases of specimen made from the R7T wheel steel. It is shown that classical models can also get sufficient ratcheting prediction when are correctly calibrated.

Experimental facts
Good understanding the nature of particular effects of cyclic plasticity plays a key role in the phenomenological modelling. Main findings from this chapter will be useful for a reader in the field of understanding the calibration of cyclic plasticity models and for correct numerical analysis results evaluation.

Bauschinger's effect
Bauschinger's effect is a basic and well known phenomenon of cyclic plasticity. It describes the fact that due to uniaxial loading of a specimen above yield limit in one direction the limit of elasticity in the opposite direction is reduced. As an example can serve the stress-strain curve corresponding to the first cycle of strain controlled low cycle fatigue test of the steel ST52 (see Fig.1). If the yield limit is marked as  Y , then the material during unloading from maximal axial stress state  1 behaves elastically up to the point, where the difference between maximal and immediate stress  1 - 2 is equal to the double of yield limit 2 Y .

Cyclic hardening/softening
Results of the micro structural changes in the beginning stage of cyclic loading are changes of physical properties and stress response in the material. Cyclic softening/hardening effect www.intechopen.com relates to softening/hardening of material response or decreasing/increasing of resistance against material deformation under cyclic loading. Its intensity usually decrease with number of cycles until the saturated state is reached. During uniaxial cyclic loading, the condition is characterized by closed hysteresis loop. Transient responses in initial cycles caused by cyclic hardening/softening under plastic strain control and stress control are shown at the Fig.2. Some materials show very strong cyclic softening/hardening (stainless steels, cooper, etc.) some less obvious (structural steels). There can be also notable cyclic hardening in certain cycles range and in the remaining lifetime cyclical softening. Properties of cyclic hardening/softening don't depend only on material microstructure, but also on loading amplitude or more generally on previous strain history. Such transient behaviour of material makes accurate stress-strain modelling more difficult. There is very often mentioned possibility of transient stress-strain behaviour estimation according to its strength limit and yield limit ratio, but also very simple hypothesis is used, claiming that hard material cyclically softens whereas soft material cyclically hardens.

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From upper peaks of several hysteresis loops corresponding to half lifetime is possible to obtain cyclic strain curve (Fig.3), which is often used in engineering computations. Fig. 3. Cyclic stress-strain curve of ST52 steel.

Non-masing behaviour
A material obeys Masing behaviour when the upper branches of hysteresis loops with different strain ranges after alignment in lower peaks overlap. More accurately, in the ideal case, single solid curve is created. From microscopic point of view Masing behaviour indicates stable microstructure in fatigue process. Most steel materials haven't Masing behaviour. Some engineering materials show Masing behaviour under certain testing conditions (Jiang & Zhang, 2008). As can be seen from the Fig.4, where the upper branches of hysteresis loops of the investigated material are displayed, the non-Masing behaviour is dependent on the amplitude of plastic strain  ap .

Non-proportional hardening
The Figure 5 illustrates the basic types of loading in the stress space. The tensioncompression and simple shear belongs to the category of proportional loading, because there is no change of principal stress directions. This group also includes multi-axialloading in which the stress tensor components change proportionally. Non-proportional loading can be therefore defined as a loading that does not meet the specified condition, and is generally characterized by the loading path in the form of curve (Fig. 5). Conception of non-proportional hardening represents material hardening as a result of nonproportional loading. Most often it is investigated under tension-compression/torsion loading. Generally, the non-proportional hardening depends on material and shape of loading path. Thereafter we can express stress amplitude where  a p is the equivalent stress amplitude under proportional loading, whereas the influence of loading path shape in a cycle is involved in the non proportional parameter  and the material parameter of additional hardening is define as = a n /  a p -1 where the quantity  a n is the maximum value of von Mises equivalent stresses under nonproportional deformation (circular path). The equivalent stress amplitude is the radius of the minimum circle that circumscribes the loading path in the deviatoric stress space, see  Non-proportional hardening of FCC alloys pertinents to the stacking fault energy. For strain controlled 90° out-of-phase loading (circular path) it was found out, that the material parameter of non proportional strain hardening is higher for materials with lower value of the stacking fault energy (Doquet & Clavel, 1996).

Ratcheting
In an uniaxial test under load controll with non-zero mean stress  m the accumulation of axial plastic strain can occur cycle by cycle. This effect is called cyclic creep or ratcheting, see  Generally, the ratcheting effect can be described as an accumulation of any component of strain tensor with increasing number of cycles. From the practical point of view the research of ratcheting, which occurs under multiaxial stress states, is also very important. There has been investigated mainly the multiaxial ratcheting under combined tensionwww.intechopen.com compression/torsion loading or the biaxial ratcheting caused by internal/external pressure with simultaneous cyclic tension-compression, bending or torsion. The ratcheting strain corresponds to the stress component with non-zero mean stress. The typical example is thinwalled tube subjected to internal (external) pressure and cyclic axial tension (Fig.8c,d). For pure symmetrical bending case (a) it was experimentally observed, that the cross-section becomes more and more oval with increasing number of cycles. This process is then strengthened, when the external pressure is applied too (b). As a next sample results of the fatigue test realised under tension -compression and torsion can serve (Fig.9). The test simulates ratcheting of shear strain, which occurs in surface layer subjected to rolling/sliding contact loading and was proposed by (McDowell, 1995). In the both axes force control was used. For measuring the axial and shear strain during the fatigue test two strain gauges rosette HBM RY3x3/120 were glued to the specimen. The pulsating torque leads to the accumulation of shear strain in the direction of applied torsional moment. The tested material R7T steel becomes almost elastic in initial cycles and then shows significant softening behaviour. After two hundred of loading cycles steady state is reached and the ratcheting rate is constant. A lot of rail and wheel steels show the decreasing ratcheting rate with the increasing number of cycles, which complicates accurate modelling of ratcheting effect. Ratcheting makes also life prediction of fatigue crack initiation difficult as well because the material www.intechopen.com could fail due to the fatigue or to the accumulation of a critical unidirectional plastic strain (ratcheting failure).

Other effects in cyclic plasticity
From the theory of elasticity and strength it is well known that the yield locus of ductile materials can be described by an ellipse in the diagram shear stress -normal stress. However, through experiments carried out under uniaxial loading was found (Williams & Svensson, 1971), that if the specimen is loaded by torsion prior to tensile test, then the yield locus (yield surface) has deformed shape. The anisotropy is usually neglected in cyclic plasticity modelling. All of the reported effects of cyclic plasticity are dependent on temperature. With increasing temperature is also strengthened the influence of strain rate on the material response.

Constitutive modelling
Basically, cyclic plasticity models can be devided into these groups: Overlay models (Besseling, 1958) Single surface models (Armstrong&Frederick, 1966) Multisurface models (Mroz, 1967) Two-surface models (Dafalias&Popov, 1976) Endochronicmodels (Valanis, 1971) Models with yield surface distortion (Kurtyka, 1988) Due to its wide popularity and robustness we focus only to the group of models with a single yield surface based on various evolution equations for internal variables.

Basics of incremental theory of plasticity
The elastoplasticity theory is based on the observations found in the case of uniaxial loading (Fig.10) where e D is the elastic stiffness matrix and the symbol ":" is contraction, i.e. using Einstein summation convention d ij =B ijkl c kl .
In the uniaxial case, the development of irreversible deformation occurs due to crossing the yield limit σ Y . Under multiaxial stress state it is necessary to consider an appropriate yield condition. For metallic materials the von Mises condition is mostly used where s is the deviatoric part of stress tensor , a is the deviatoric part of back-stress , which states the centre position for the yield surface with the initial size  Y and R is the isotropic internal variable. The contraction operation ":" in (5) can be expressed again in terms of Einstein summation convention d=b ij c ij . Now it is necessary to answer the question: When happens a change of plastic strain increment? If the point representing the current stress state lies on the yield surface it can be supposed that this point do not leave the yield surface, the so called consistency condition f =0  must be valid. In case of active loading the plastic deformation development is directed by the associated plastic flow rule where the plastic multiplier d in (7) corresponds to the equivalent plastic strain increment pp dp dd 2 : 3  εε .
play an essential role for the robustness of stress-strain model response. When the both hardening rules are used we speak about mixed hardening. Transient effects from initial cycles (cyclical hardening/softening), non-proportional hardening, ratcheting and other effects of cyclic plasticity can be described by a suitable superposition of kinematic and isotropic hardening rules.
In the case of cyclic loading a kinematic hardening rule should always be included in the plasticity model, otherwise the Bauschinger's effect cannot be correctly described. Fig. 11.Von Mises yield function with mixed hardening in the deviatoric plane.
The kinematic hardening rule is important in terms of the needs of capturing the cyclical response of the material. Description of the classical kinematic hardening rules and the resulting cyclic plasticity models is contained in next four subsections. Their availability in selected commercial software based on finite element method is given in Table 1.

Kinematic hardening Ansys 13 Abaqus MSC.Marc MSC. Nastran
Bilinear -- Table 1.Occurrence of cyclic plasticity models in some popular FE software.

Bilinear and multilinear kinematic hardening models
There are two bilinear kinematic hardening rules coded in the most popular FE software, suggested by Prager (1953) and Ziegler (1959). The models predict the same response for von Mises material (Ottosen&Ristinmaa, 2005) and for uniaxial loading their response is bilinear. The models show no ratcheting under uniaxial loading and tend to plastic shakedown for a biaxial history of loading. The nonlinearity in stress-strain behaviour can be introduced by a multisurface model, when each surface represents a constant work hardening modulus in the stress space (Mroz, 1967).
Besseling in 1958 introduced a multilinear overlay model, which has a physical meaning and does not use any notion of surfaces. The Besseling model predicts plastic shakedown for www.intechopen.com uniaxial loading independently of mean stress value. Unfortunately, the mean stress relaxation effect cannot be described too.

Armstrong-Frederick kinematic hardening model
The important work, leading to the introduction of nonlinearity in the kinematic hardening rule, was the research report of Armstrong and Frederick (1966). In their model the memory term is added to the Prager rule where C and  are material parameters. Their physical meaning will be explained for pushpull loading. The quantity dp is an increment of accumulated plastic strain, which is expressed as follows pp dp =dd 2 : 3 εε Considering initially isotropic homogenous material, Von-Misses condition can be again used as follows where a is a deviator of backstress  and s is deviator of stress tensor .
For the uniaxial loading case, the von Mises yield condition becomes to the simpler form Similarly we can modify nonlinear kinematic hardening rule if we will consider only deviatoric part of the equation (11) where tanh(x) is the hyperbolic tangent function and  a ,  ap are stress amplitude and plastic strain amplitude respectively. For a proper ratcheting description, the condition of equality for computed and experimentally stated ratcheting strain rate for opened stabilized hysteresis loop (Fig.7) should be satisfied According to (Chaboche & Lemaitre, 1990), for Armstrong-Frederick kinematic hardening rule the plastic strain increment per cycle can be written as follows (with absence of isotropic hardening) where p  is measured between upper peaks of two hysteresis loops as can be seen in Fig.7.

Chaboche kinematic hardening model
Very important improvement was the proposal of nonlinear kinematic hardening model by Chaboche (1979) The quality of cyclic strain curve description is adequate in the case of Chaboche model with the three evolution parts.
Thanks to the similar properties of functions tanh(x) and 1-exp(-x), including its derivatives, it is possible to use the same approach for parameter estimation from the static even cyclic strain curve. Parameters should be determined for example by a nonlinear least-squares method. It is useful to consider Prager's rule for the last backstress part (γ M = 0). The parameter influence ratcheting and mean stress relaxation effects. Therefore, we can use this approximation function for cyclic and static strain curves respectively When the cyclic strain curve of the investigated material is not available, it is possible to use for the calibration of the model also large saturated hysteresis loop. Based on the relationship (31), considering tension ( 1   ) and these initial values (see Fig15) we can get for the upper branch of the hysteresis loop this expression In the Chaboche model the parameter γ M influences ratcheting (provided that the last backstress part has the lowest value of the parameter γ i ) and is chosen to be small (up to γ M =10). For the case of γ M = 0 ratcheting cannot occur. However, after particular number of cycles the stabilized hysteresis loop will be formed (the Chaboche model tends to plastic shakedown) as it is clear from the graph at the Fig.16. For many materials such behavior does not correspond with reality and during numerical modeling, constant deformation increment can be achieved with aim of suitable choice of parameter γ M . We can also provide the relation published elsewhere (Chaboche and Nouailhas 1989).
Thus, with suitable choice of γ M we get very good model for uniaxial ratcheting prediction (ratcheting with steady state only). In case of non-proportional loading the Chaboche model with three backstresses (M=3) considered in Fig.14 and Fig.15 drastically over predicts ratcheting as has been shown by other researchers (Bari & Hassan, 2000).

Mixed hardening models
Most of materials exhibit Masing and cyclic softening/hardening behaviour, which can be described by superposition of isotropic hardening to a kinematic hardening rule. In this case the size of yield surface Y is expressed with aim of initial value of  Y and isotropic variable R, which is usually dependent on the accumulated plastic deformation.
If we would like to describe cyclic softening/hardening, it is convenient to use simple evolutionary equation, leading to nonlinear isotropic hardening rule where R  , b are material parameters and dp is an increment of accumulated plastic strain. The value of constant b, which determines the rate of stabilization of the hysteresis loop in case of loading with constant strain amplitude (Fig.17), can be determined directly from following equation which follows from integration of equation (39) under following assumption: Change of variable R from zero to R  and p from zero to p. Other possibilities how to identify the constant b are briefly described in (Chaboche & Lemaitre, 1990). Fig. 17. Evolution of isotropic internal variable R for the nonlinear isotropic hardening rule.
The material parameter R  can be determined, for example, by comparison of static and cyclic strain curve of particular material.

Other cyclic plasticity models
After Chaboche (1979) there were designed many evolution equations for better ratcheting prediction in the category of nonlinear kinematic hardening rules, but mostly based on the Chaboche superposition of several backstress parts. Because of the large number of theories we choose for their presentation form of table, which contains links to the original publications (Table 2). Presented group of cyclic plasticity models of Chaboche type, which considers the backstress to be defined by M parts can be generalized considering the evolution equation in the form where C i ,  i are material parameters, d p is plastic strain increment and dp (i) is the increment of accumulated plastic strain causing dynamic recovery of  (i) .
Authors do not guarantee completeness of the set of theories. There are also some new models and approaches. Very progressive are so called models with yield surface distortion, for example Vincent (2004), which are able to model the anisotropy induced by previous plastic deformation (see chapter 2.6). It is obvious that many theories differ very little. For correct description of ratcheting in proportional and non-proportional loading more and more authors introduced a nonproportional parameter, which enables simultaneous correct description of uniaxial and multiaxial ratcheting (Chen & Jiao 2004;Chen, 2005;Halama, 2008). Significant improvements of prediction capability can be reached by using memory surfaces Sehitoglu, 1996 andDöring, 2003). Presented models should be compared in terms of nonlinearity, established for each backstress in the case of uniaxial loading. The Fig.18 compares four basic hardening rules.  (Ohno-Wang, 1993), (AbdelKarim-Ohno, 2000), or a stabilised hysteresis loop (Bari & Hassan, 2000). Fig. 18. Nonlinearity introduced in four basic cyclic plasticity models.
www.intechopen.com Fig. 19. Influence of ratcheting parameter on the response of AbdelKarim-Ohno model.
As shown in Fig.19, appropriate choice of parameter gives desired ratcheting rate.
Considering the only one parameter for ratcheting  i = and its evolution by equation transient effects in initial cycles can be described too.

Ratcheting simulations for a wheel steel
There was realized a set of low-cycle fatigue tests of specimen made from R7T wheel steel at the Czech Technical University in Prague. The specimens were subjected to tensioncompression and tension/torsion on the test machine MTS 858 MiniBionix. All tests were force controlled. More detailed description of experiments was reported elsewhere (Halama, 2009). Four cases considered for simulations in this book are shown in Fig.20. Fig. 20. The scheme of four realized loading paths.
For a description of the stress strain behaviour the AbdelKarim-Ohno model and two classical models of cyclic plasticity were chosen -Armstrong-Frederick model and Chaboche model with two backstress parts (M=2). The AbdelKarim-Ohno model was implemented to the ANSYS program via user subroutine. Material parameters used in simulations are listed in the tables below, except elastic constants (Young modulus E=180000MPa and Poisson´s ratio =0.3).

Plasticitymodel
Material parameters Armstrong-Frederick and Voce rule (AF) Chabocheand Voce rule (CHAB)  Table 3. Material parameters of used cyclic plasticity models.
Cyclic plasticity models were calibrated using saturated hysteresis loop from the test with strain range of 1.5% (Fig.21) and a uniaxial ratcheting test. The calibration procedure used for AbdelKarim-Ohno model was described in the paper Halama (2008). The results of ratcheting prediction gained from simulations of the low cycle fatigue test with nonzero mean stress (case D: 500 cycles with σ m = 40MPa and σ a = 500MPa) are shown for all three material models in Fig. 22.   The results of multiaxial ratcheting predictions corresponding to simulations of the low cycle fatigue test performed under tension/torsion non-proportional (case A: 150 cycles with σ a = 125MPa and  a = 300MPa) and proportional loading (case C: 100 cycles with σ a = 225MPa and  a = 65MPa) are displayed in Fig. 23.   Fig. 23. Comparison of multiaxial ratcheting predictions with experiment (cases A and C).

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The models CHAB and AF contain the nonlinear isotropic hardening rule (39), which enables to describe cyclic softening in initial cycles, see Fig.22. On the other hand, ratcheting prediction is better in the case of AbdelKarim-Ohno model. The same conclusion we have for simulations of the last loading case (case B: 500 cycles with σ a = 490MPa and  a = 170MPa, 250 cycles with σ a = 490MPa and  a = 115MPa, 250 cycles with σ a = 490MPa and  a = 215MPa) as can be seen at the Fig. 24.

Conclusion
Background of the particular effects in cyclic plasticity of metals explained in the second section makes possible to understand well described incremental theory of plasticity and m a i n f e a t u r e s o f c y c l i c p l a s t i c i t y m o d e l s o f C h a b o c h e t y p e . T h e r e h a v e b e e n s h o w n interesting results of fatigue test simulations with emphasis on cyclic creep (ratcheting) prediction. It can be concluded from the results of simulations of the section 4 that used combined hardening model of Chaboche with two backstress parts can fairly well predicts the trend of accumulation of plastic deformation (ratcheting) for uniaxial and multiaxial loading cases, even under non-proportional loading, in comparison with the experimental observations of the R7T wheel steel. Indeed, the AbdelKarim-Ohno model gives better prediction of ratcheting for all cases than Armstrong-Frederick and Chaboche model.

Acknowledgment
This chapter has been elaborated in the framework of the IT4Innovations Centre of Excellence project, reg. no. CZ.1.05/1.1.00/02.0070 supported by Operational Programme 'Research and Development for Innovations' funded by Structural Funds of the European Union and state budget of the Czech Republic. Authors would like to appreciate the assistance of BONATRANS GROUP a.s. Bohumín company during the preparation and realization of experiments.