A scaling law for the effect of inertia on the formation of adiabatic shear bands

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