Description of full-range strain hardening behavior of steels.

Mathematical expression describing plastic behavior of steels allows the execution of parametric studies for many purposes. Various formulas have been developed to characterize stress strain curves of steels. However, most of those formulas failed to describe accurately the strain hardening behavior of steels in the full range which shows various distinct stages. For this purpose, a new formula is developed based on the well-known Ramberg-Osgood formula to describe the full range strain hardening behavior of steels. Test results of all the six types of steels show a three-stage strain hardening behavior. The proposed formula can describe such behavior accurately in the full range using a single expression. The parameters of the formula can be obtained directly and easily through linear regression analysis. Excellent agreements with the test data are observed for all the steels tested. Furthermore, other formulas such as Ludwigson formula, Gardner formula, UGent formula are also applied for comparison. Finally, the proposed formula is considered to have wide suitability and high accuracy for all the steels tested.