Prestressing steel wires usually undergo cyclic loading in service. Therefore, it is of interest to analyse certain features of their mechanical behaviour under this type of loading, such as the Bauschinger effect (BE) or the hardening rule, that fit the real mechanical behaviour appropriately. In this study, different samples of high strength pearlitic steel wires were subjected to cyclic tension-compression load exceeding the material yield strength, thus generating plastic strains. From the experimental results, various parameters were obtained revealing that analysed steels exhibited the so-called Masing type BE. In addition, the variation of the BE characteristics (of the effective and internal stresses) with the applied plastic pre-strain indicated that the studied materials followed a mixed strain hardening rule with the domination of the kinematic component.
