Mechanical behaviour modelling under dynamic conditions: Application to structural and high strength steels

Current needs in the design and optimization of complex ballistic protection structures lead to the development of more and more accurate numerical modelling for high impact velocity. The aim of developing such a tool is to be able to predict the protection performance of structures using few experiments. Considering only numerical approach, most important issue to have a reliable simulation is to focus on material behaviour description in term of constitutive relation and failure model for high strain rates, large field of temperatures and complex stress states. In this context, the study deals with the behaviour of two steels including a high strength steel and a structural steel. For this application, the materials can undergo both quasi-static and dynamic loading. Thus the strain rate range studied is varying from 10−3 to more than 103 s−1 . Although the high strength steels do not exhibit high strain rate sensitivity, the temperature increases during dynamic loading is inducing thermal softening. Thus, temperature sensitivity is defined up to 500 K under quasi-static and dynamic conditions. Then, experiments are used to define the parameters of several constitutive relations like the Johnson-Cook model or the Rusinek Klepaczko model.