Yield function development for aluminum alloy sheets

In this work, yield surfaces were measured for binary aluminum-magnesium sheet samples which were fabricated by different processing paths to obtain different microstructures. The yielding behavior was measured using biaxial compression tests on cubic specimens made from laminated sheet samples. The yield surfaces were also predicted from a polycrystal model using crystallographic texture data as input and from a phenomenological yield function usually suitable for polycrystalline materials. The experimental yield surfaces were found to be in good agreement with the polycrystal predictions for all materials and with the phenomenological predictions for most materials. However, for samples processed with high cold rolling reduction prior to solution heat treatment, a significant difference was observed between the phenomenological and the experimental yield surfaces in the pure shear region. In this paper, a generalized phenomenological yield description is proposed to account for the behavior of the solute strengthened aluminum alloy sheets studied in this work. It is subsequently shown that this yield function is suitable for the description of the plastic behavior of any aluminum alloy sheet. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.