Modifications on A-F Hardening Rule to Assess Ratcheting Response of Materials and Its Interaction with Fatigue Damage under Uniaxial Stress Cycles
Authors: Ahmadzadehrishehri Gholamreza 
Published: May 2021

Ratcheting deformation is accumulated progressively over three distinct stages in materials undergoing asymmetrical cyclic stresses. The present thesis evaluates the triphasic ratcheting response of materials from two stand points: (i) Mechanistic approach at which stages of ratcheting progress over stress cycles was related to mechanistic parameters such as stress level, lifespan, mechanical properties and the softening/hardening response of materials. Mechanistic approach formulated in this thesis was employed to assess ratcheting strain over triphasic stages in various steel and copper alloys under uniaxial stress cycles. Good agreements were achieved between the predicted ratcheting strain values based on the proposed formulation and those of experimentally reported. (ii) Kinematic hardening rule approach at which the hardening rule was characterized by the yield surface translation mechanism and the corresponding plastic modulus calculated based on the consistency condition.

Various cyclic plasticity models were employed to assess ratcheting response of materials under different loading conditions. The Armstrong-Frederick (A-F) hardening rule was taken as the backbone of ratcheting analysis developed in this thesis mainly due to less complexity and number of coefficients in the hardening rule as compared with other earlier developed hardening rules in the literature.

To predict triphasic ratcheting strain over stress cycles, the A-F hardening rule has been further developed by means of new strain rate coefficients γ2 and δ. These coefficients improved the hardening rule capability to calibrate and control the rate of ratcheting over its progressive stages. The modified hardening formulation holds the coefficients of the hardening rule to control stress-strain hysteresis loops generated over stress cycles during ratcheting process plus the ratcheting rates over stages I, II, and III. These coefficients were calibrated and defined based on the applied stress levels. The constructed calibration curves were employed to determine strain rate coefficients required to assess ratcheting response of materials under uniaxial loading conditions at various cyclic stress levels. The predicted ratcheting strain values based on the modified hardening rule were found in good agreements with the experimentally obtained ratcheting data over stages I and II under uniaxial loading conditions. The capability of the modified hardening rule to assess ratcheting deformation of materials under multi-step uniaxial loading spectra was also assessed. Subsequent load steps were considerably affected by previous load steps in multi-step loading conditions. Ratcheting strains for low-high stress steps were successfully predicted by the modified hardening rule. High-low loading sequences however resulted in an overestimated reversed ratcheting strain in the later load steps.

The modified hardening rule proposed in this thesis was then employed to predict the ratcheting strain and its concurrent interaction with fatigue damage over stress cycles in steel alloys. The interaction of ratcheting and fatigue damage was defined based on mechanistic parameters involving the effects of mean stress, stress amplitude, and cyclic softening/hardening response of materials. The extent of ratcheting effect on the overall damage of steel samples was defined by means of the product of the average ratcheting strain rate over the stress cycles and the applied maximum cyclic stress, while fatigue damage was analysed based on earlier developed energy-based models of Xia-Ellyin and Smith-Watson-Topper. Overall damage induced by both ratcheting and fatigue was calibrated through a weighting factor at various ratios of mean stress/cyclic amplitude stress. The estimated lives based on the proposed algorithm at different mean stresses and stress amplitudes showed good agreements as compared with experiments.