Viscoplastic analysis of thin-walled tubes under cyclic bending

In this paper, different curvature-rates are controlled to highlight the ch aracteristic of viscoplastic response in cyclic bending tests. The curvatur e-ovalization apparatus, which was designed by Pan et al. (1998), is used f or conducting the curvature-controlled experiments on thin-walled tubular s pecimens for AISl 304 stainless steel under cyclic bending. The results rev eals that the faster the curvature-rate implies, the fast degree of hardeni ng of the metal tube. However, the ovalization of the tube cross-section in creases when the curvature-rate increases.