Defining plasticity in Abaqus

When defining plasticity data in Abaqus, you must use true stress and true strain.
Abaqus requires these values to interpret the data correctly.

Quite often material test data are supplied using values of nominal stress and strain. In
such situations you must use the expressions presented below to convert the plastic
material data from nominal stress-strain values to true stress-strain values.

The relationship between true strain and nominal strain is established by expressing the
nominal strain as

εnom=(l−l )/l =l/l0−l0/l0=l/l0−1.

0 0

Adding unity to both sides of this expression and taking the natural log of both sides
provides the relationship between the true strain and the nominal strain:

ε=ln(1+εnom).
The relationship between true stress and nominal stress is formed by considering the
incompressible nature of the plastic deformation and assuming the elasticity is also
incompressible, so

l0/A0=l/A.
The current area is related to the original area by

A=A0*(l0/l).
Substituting this definition of A into the definition of true stress gives

σ=F/A=F/(A0*(l/l0))=σnom(l/l0),
where

l/l0
can also be written as
1+εnom.
Making this final substitution provides the relationship between true stress and
nominal stress and strain:

σ=σnom(1+εnom).
These relationships are valid only prior to necking.

The classical metal plasticity model in Abaqus defines the post-yield behavior for most
metals. Abaqus approximates the smooth stress-strain behavior of the material with a
series of straight lines joining the given data points. Any number of points can be used
to approximate the actual material behavior; therefore, it is possible to use a very close
approximation of the actual material behavior. The plastic data define the true yield
stress of the material as a function of true plastic strain. The first piece of data given
defines the initial yield stress of the material and, therefore, should have a plastic strain
value of zero.

The strains provided in material test data used to define the plastic behavior are not
likely to be the plastic strains in the material. Instead, they will probably be the total
strains in the material. You must decompose these total strain values into the elastic and
plastic strain components. The plastic strain is obtained by subtracting the elastic strain,
defined as the value of true stress divided by the Young's modulus, from the value of
total strain (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Decomposition of the total strain into elastic and plastic components.

This relationship is written

εpl=εt−εel=εt − σ/E,
where

εpl
is true plastic strain,

εt
is true total strain,

εel
is true elastic strain,

σ
is true stress, and

is Young's modulus.

Example of converting material test data to Abaqus input

The nominal stress-strain curve in Figure 2 will be used as an example of how to

convert the test data defining a material's plastic behavior into the appropriate
input format for Abaqus. The six points shown on the nominal stress-strain curve
will be used to determine the plastic data.
 Figure 2. Elastic-plastic material behavior.

The first step is to use the equations relating the true stress to the nominal stress
and strain and the true strain to the nominal strain (shown earlier) to convert the
nominal stress and nominal strain to true stress and true strain. Once these
values are known, the equation relating the plastic strain to the total and elastic
strains (shown earlier) can be used to determine the plastic strains associated
with each yield stress value. The converted data are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Stress and strain conversions.

Nominal Stress Nominal True Stress True Plastic
(Pa) Strain (Pa) Strain Strain
200E6 0.00095 200.2E6 0.00095 0.0
240E6 0.025 246E6 0.0247 0.0235
280E6 0.050 294E6 0.0488 0.0474
340E6 0.100 374E6 0.0953 0.0935
380E6 0.150 437E6 0.1398 0.1377
400E6 0.200 480E6 0.1823 0.1800

While there are few differences between the nominal and true values at small
strains, there are very significant differences at larger strain values; therefore, it is
extremely important to provide the proper stress-strain data to Abaqus if the
strains in the simulation will be large.

Data regularization in Abaqus/Explicit

When performing an analysis, Abaqus/Explicit may not use the material data
exactly as defined by the user; for efficiency, all material data that are defined in
tabular form are automatically regularized. Material data can be functions of
temperature, external fields, and internal state variables, such as plastic strain.
For each material point calculation, the state of the material must be determined
by interpolation, and, for efficiency, Abaqus/Explicit fits the user-defined curves
with curves composed of equally spaced points. These regularized material
curves are the material data used during the analysis. It is important to
understand the differences that might exist between the regularized material
curves used in the analysis and the curves that you specified.

To illustrate the implications of using regularized material data, consider the

following two cases. Figure 3 shows a case in which the user has defined data
that are not regular.

Figure 3. Example of user data that can be regularized exactly.

In this example Abaqus/Explicit generates the six regular data points shown, and
the user's data are reproduced exactly. Figure 4 shows a case where the user has
defined data that are difficult to regularize exactly. In this example it is assumed
that Abaqus/Explicit has regularized the data by dividing the range into 10
intervals that do not reproduce the user's data points exactly.
 Figure 4. Example of user data that are difficult to regularize.

Abaqus/Explicit attempts to use enough intervals such that the maximum error
between the regularized data and the user-defined data is less than 3%; however,
you can change this error tolerance. If more than 200 intervals are required to
obtain an acceptable regularized curve, the analysis stops during the data
checking with an error message. In general, the regularization is more difficult if
the smallest interval defined by the user is small compared to the range of the
independent variable. In Figure 4 the data point for a strain of 1.0 makes the
range of strain values large compared to the small intervals defined at low strain
levels. Removing this last data point enables the data to be regularized much
more easily.

Interpolation between data points

Abaqus interpolates linearly between the data points provided (or, in

Abaqus/Explicit, regularized data) to obtain the material's response and assumes
that the response is constant outside the range defined by the input data, as
shown in Figure 5. Thus, the stress in this material will never exceed 480 MPa;
when the stress in the material reaches 480 MPa, the material will deform
continuously until the stress is reduced below this value.
 Figure 5. Material curve used by Abaqus.

Material calibration in Abaqus/CAE

Abaqus/CAE allows you to calibrate a material model from test data. With this
capability, you can import material test data into Abaqus/CAE, process the data,
and derive elastic and plastic isotropic material behaviors from the data. This
feature is discussed further in Creating material calibrations.