Simulation of heat exchange during simple shear of sheet steel

An original technique to measure the temperature increase in the shear zone during quasi-static loading of a sheet metal is reported. The set-up used to perform such a test has been developed in IPPT-Warsaw (Gadaj et al., 1996). The tested material is a ES sheet steel (Enhanced Formability) used in automotive industry. In addition, several tests have been performed on this material for different strain rates $ (10^{-4}\leq\dot{\gamma}\leq10^3$ s$^{-1})$ in LPMM-Metz (Nguyen and Nowacki, 1998; Rusinek and Klepaczko, 2001). The experimental results enabled formulation of original visco-plastic constitutive relations (Rusinek and Klepaczko, 2001). Those constitutive relations have been implemented into a numerical code to simulate the experimental results and to compare the temperature gradient in the shear band and to calibrate the heat conduction into the surface contact (specimen-grips). The comparison between the experimental and numerical results yielded complete agreement. Thus, the visco-plastic model implemented in this study is well defined for this type of problem. Moreover, the numerical simulations indicated that at a high strain rate, $ \dot{\gamma}\approx10^3$ s$^{-1}$, the heat evacuation to the surface contact of the grips seemed to be negligible. In that case the specimen was thermally isolated and the temperature increase took place essentially within the shear zone.