A unique numerical iterative approach for modelling individual phase stress-strain curves in dual phase steel

Understanding the effects of martensite volume fractions (V m) in dual phase (DP) steel resulting from heat treatment is crucial for designing structures for mechanical impact resistance and optimizing manufacturing processes. DP steel’s material behaviour depends heavily on its microstructure properties. While stress-strain curves for individual phases in DP steels are often determined using empirical models, extensive experimental data is required to establish empirical model constants. This research aims to achieve two main objectives: firstly, to calibrate stress-strain curves for pure ferrite and pure martensite using limited experimental data using micromechanical adaptive iteration algorithm (MAIA). This calibration involves using stress-strain data from DP steels with varying V m during the calibration stage and additional data for verification. Secondly, to conduct a comprehensive sensitivity analysis of MAIA to assess its capabilities and limitations. Microstructure-based finite element (FE) models, simulated with ABAQUS/Standard, are employed to predict stress-strain curves under uniaxial tensile test conditions. The MAIA approach successfully calculated ferrite and martensite stress-strain curves that could predict plastic behaviour of DP steel with different V m, which agreed with experimental work. Key advantages of this approach include avoiding complex 3D microstructure geometries and requiring only two experimentally obtained stress-strain curves with different Vm for material constant calibration, along with another curve for validation. However, the experimental data selected for calibration must have a V m difference between 20%–50% and one of the DP steels must have a low martensite volume fraction. The FE micromechanical model could capture the effect of softening of martensite phase and strengthening of ferrite phase as compared to its bulk properties for DP steel. The effect of V m on strain hardening rate was also successfully captured. This technique comes with obvious shortcomings, such as excluding crystal plasticity behaviour, and change in chemical composition within the individual phase with varying martensite volume fraction.