Experimental extrapolation of hardening curve for cylindrical specimens via pre-torsion tension tests

Abstract

The hardening curve for cylindrical specimens determined by conventional uniaxial tension tests generally corresponds to a relatively narrow strain range due to the occurrence of necking. To achieve the hardening curve within a large strain range, in this study, the multi-specimen tension tests with pre-torsion are developed through extrapolating the hardening curve from the stress–strain data of cylindrical specimens with various magnitudes of pre-torsion strains. The calculation of pre-strain of twisted specimen needs to be addressed for the multi-specimen tension tests. The three calculation methods on the multi-specimen tension tests are proposed, leading to their individual hardening curves for Q345 specimens. An optimal strategy for the multi-specimen tests with pre-torsion is presented by comparison with the inverse method for a single specimen tension test. The results for Q345 specimen show the strain range (0–0.6) of the hardening curve determined by the multi-specimen tension tests is significantly larger than one (0–0.04) from conventional tension test, with reasonable accuracy. Compared with the current multi-specimen tests with pre-extrusion/drawing, the proposed multi-specimen tests with pre-torsion is possessed of stronger applicability and generality, lower cost, and higher efficiency.