Determining a material constitutive law which is representative of the extreme conditions found in the cutting zone during machining operations is a very challenging problem. In this study, dynamic shear tests, which reproduce, as faithfully as possible, these conditions in terms of strain, strain rate and temperature, have been developed using hat-shaped specimens. The objective was to identify the parameters of a Johnson-Cook material behaviour model by an inverse method for three titanium alloys: Ti6Al4V, Ti555-3 and Ti17. In order to be as representative as possible of the experimental results, the parameters of the Johnson-Cook model were not considered to be constant over the total range of the strain rate and temperature investigated. This reflects a change in the mechanisms governing the deformation. The shear zones observed in hat-shaped specimens were analysed and compared to those produced in chips during conventional machining for both materials. It is concluded that, in the Ti555-3 alloy, the proportion of alpha-phase greatly reduces in high strain-rate zones.
