A SCALING LAW FOR THE EFFECT OF INERTIA ON THE FORMATION OF ADIABATICSHEAR BANDS

For a rigid/perfectly plastic material with linear thermal softening a nd power law rate hardening there is a competition between heat conduc tion and inertia in determining the time of shear band formation. In a finite specimen the nominal strain rate that produces the fastest gro wth of perturbations corresponds to the minimum critical strain. Simil arly for a fixed strain rate in an infinite specimen, there is a finit e wavelength with the maximum growth rate. It is argued that this wave length should correspond to the most probable minimum spacing for shea r bands. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd