Orthotropic damage in high-strength steel sheets. An elasto-viscoplastic material model with mixed hardening

Within the scope of thermodynamics with internal variables, constitutive and evolution equations (representing ductile deformation of sheets made of high strength steel alloys) with mixed hardening and damage have been derived. As a result of the derivation, the rate-dependent elastoplastic constitutive model is identified. The material is assumed to be oriented in the principal damage directions, indicating orthotropic damage. Owing to postulates within continuum damage mechanics, a general expression for degradation of elastic properties in materials has been obtained. A numerical algorithm for the integration of the constitutive equations has been developed as well, based on an elastic predictor – plastic/damage corrector procedure. The plastic/damage corrector is based on a fully implicit backward Euler scheme. In order to consider viscoplastic material properties, the overstress (in the definition of the plastic multiplier) is a function of the plastic yield function