Effect of thermal softening in shearing of strain-rate dependent materials (Q579988)

The aim of this paper is to analyze the interaction of thermal softening and strain hardening in shearing deformations of strain-rate dependent materials, and to provide quantitative criteria for stability as well as instability. The test problem is adiabatic, plastic shearing of an infinite plate of unit thickness subject to prescribed tractions at the boundary. All results of this paper are based on the following boundary-initial value problem: \[ (1)\quad v_ t=\sigma_ x,\quad \theta_ t=\sigma v_ x,\quad \gamma_ t=v_ x,\quad 0<x<1,\quad 0<t<\infty; \] \[ (2)\quad \sigma =\mu (\theta,\gamma)\gamma_ t,\quad 0\leq x\leq 1,\quad 0\leq t<\infty; \] \[ (3)\quad \sigma (0,T)=0,\quad \sigma (1,t)=1,\quad t\geq 0; \] \[ (4)\quad v(x,0)=v_ 0(x),\quad \theta (x,0)=\theta_ 0(x),\quad \gamma (x,0)=\gamma_ 0(x),\quad 0\leq x<1. \] In the above equations \(v=v(x,t)\) is the velocity field, \(\gamma\) (x,t) is the shear strain, \(\sigma\) (x,t) is the shear stress, \(\theta\) (x,t) is the temperature and \(\mu =\mu (\theta,\gamma)\) is a given function which satisfies the conditions \[ (5)\quad \mu (\theta,\gamma)>0,\quad \mu_{\theta}(\theta,\gamma)<0,\quad 0<\theta <\infty,\quad 0<\gamma <\infty. \] The author investigates an alternative formulation of (1),(2),(3),(4). This new formulation gives a system of reaction- diffusion type equations. Theorem 1 gives the answer to the following question: Can the destabilizing effect of thermal softening induce blow up in finite time of solutions of (1),(2),(3),(4). The large time behavior of the solutions of (1),(2),(3),(4) are analyzed in detail and some existence theorems are proved by using the maximum principles and Leray-Schauder fixed point theorem.