Strain Hardening and Adiabatic Heating of Stainless Steels After a Sudden Increase of Strain Rate

This study focuses on the strain hardening and adiabatic heating of two stainless steels after a sudden increase of strain rate. Tensile tests were performed where the strain rate was rapidly increased from ~ 10 –4 s −1 to 1.3 × 10 3 s −1 . Synchronized full field strain and temperature measurements were carried out with Digital Image Correlation and Infrared Thermography to analyze the materials behavior immediately after the strain rate jump. The results show that the temperature increases gradually while the strain hardening rate drops immediately after the strain rate jump. The temperature increase due to adiabatic heating does not seem to explain the drop in the strain hardening rate, thus the strain rate seems to have a direct effect on the strain hardening rate of the studied steels.