Austenitic-ferritic stainless steels are supplied since about 30 years only, so they are yet not well-known. Their behaviour in cyclic plasticity was studied under uniaxial loading but not under multiaxial loading, whereas only a thorough knowledge of the phenomena influencing the mechanical behaviour of a material enables to simulate and predict accurately its behaviour in a structure. This work aims to study and model the behaviour of a duplex stainless steel under cyclic biaxial loading. A three step method was adopted. A set of tension-torsion tests on tubular specimen was first defined. We studied the equivalence between loading directions, and then the influence of loading path and loading history on the stress response of the material. Results showed that duplex stainless steel shows an extra-hardening under nonproportional loading and that its behaviour depends on previous loading. Then, in order to analyse the results obtained during this first experimental stage, the yield surface was measured at different times during cyclic loading of the same kind. A very small plastic strain offset (2 10-5) was used in order not to disturb the yield surface measured. The alteration of isotropic and kinematic hardening variables were deduced from these measures. Finally, three phenomenological constitutive laws were identified with the experimental set. We focused our interest on the simulation of stabilized stress levels and on the simulation of the cyclic hardening/softening behaviour. The comparison between experimental and numerical results enabled the testing of the relevance of these models.
Cyclic plasticity of an austenitic-ferritic stainless steel under biaxial nonproportional loading