A thermo-viscoplasticity model for metals over wide temperature ranges- application to case hardening steel

In this contribution, a model for the thermomechanically coupled behaviour of case hardening steel is introduced with application to 16MnCr5 (1.7131). The model is based on a decomposition of the free energy into a thermo-elastic and a plastic part. Associated viscoplasticity, in terms of a temperature-depenent Perzyna-type power law, in combination with an isotropic von Mises yield function takes respect for strain-rate dependency of the yield stress. The model covers additional temperature-related effects, like temperature-dependent elastic moduli, coefficient of thermal expansion, heat capacity, heat conductivity, yield stress and cold work hardening. The formulation fulfils the second law of thermodynamics in the form of the Clausius–Duhem inequality by exploiting the Coleman–Noll procedure. The introduced model parameters are fitted against experimental data. An implementation into a fully coupled finite element model is provided and representative numerical examples are presented showing aspects of the localisation and regularisation behaviour of the proposed model.