Plastic anisotropy and ductile fracture of bake-hardened AA6013 aluminum sheet

The anisotropic plastic flow and ductile fracture of AA6013 aluminum sheet is investigated under quasistatic conditions. The plasticity of the material is probed through uniaxial tension, plane-strain tension and disk-compression experiments, from which the Yld2004-18p non-quadratic 3D anisotropic yield criterion and the combined Swift-Voce hardening model are calibrated. The ductile fracture is characterized with two notched-tension (different notch radii), one center-hole tension and one shear experiment. These experiments cover a wide range of stress triaxialities, while requiring only a universal testing machine to be conducted. Digital Image Correlation is used throughout the experiments to assess the surface strain fields. The predictions of three plasticity models, i.e., von-Mises and Yld2004-18p with constant and with evolving exponents and the corresponding Swift-Voce curves, are compared to the measured force–displacement curves and surface strain histories. These models are then used to probe the stresses, strains, stress triaxiality and Lode angle parameter throughout the loading to fracture. It was found that this hybrid experimental-numerical approach for the fracture strain determination is very sensitive to the constitutive model adopted. As an independent assessment, a microstructure-based estimation of the fracture strains is described. This verified that the von–Mises yield criterion for this AA6013 aluminum sheet provides erroneous estimates of the fracture strains. The most suitable constitutive model is the Yld2004-18p with evolving exponent. Based on these results, the fracture loci are represented by the Oyane, Johnson–Cook and Hosford–Coulomb models.