Effect of strain rate on shear properties and fracture characteristics of DP600 and AA5182-O sheet metal alloys

Abstract

Shear tests were performed at strain rates ranging from quasi-static (.01 s−1) to 600 s−1 for DP600 steel and AA5182-O sheet metal alloys at room temperature. A miniature sized shear specimen was modified and validated in this work to perform high strain rate shear testing. Digital image correlation (DIC) techniques were employed to measure the strains in the experiments, and a criterion to detect the onset of fracture based on the hardening rate of the materials is proposed. At equivalent strains greater than 20%, the DP600 and AA5182 alloys demonstrated a reduced work hardening rate at elevated strain rates. At lower strains, the DP600 shows positive rate sensitivity while the AA5182 was not sensitive to strain rate. For both alloys, the equivalent fracture strain and elongation to failure decreased with strain rate. A conversion of the shear stress to an equivalent stress using the von Mises yield criterion provided excellent agreement with the results from tensile tests at elevated strain rates. Unlike the tensile test, the shear test is not limited by the onset of necking so the equivalent stress can be determined over a larger range of strain.