A WIDE-RANGE CONSTITUTIVE EQUATION FOR MEDIUM AND HIGH-STRENGTH STEEL

A Constitutive Equation has been determined for a medium strength stee l and has been shown to have identical form to the modified Armstrong Zerilli equation used for iron. The strengthening mechanism in steel a ppears to act through a constant which is subject to thermal softening through the shear modulus but the pact of the model describing therma lly activated processes remains almost identical to that observed in i ron. These observations suggest the possibility of using this equation as a generic form for a wide class of steels in which the determinati on of coefficients is simplified considerably.