A thermodynamic internal variable model for the partition of plastic work into heat and stored energy in metals (Q1573246)

The paper is concerned with the fraction, commonly denoted by \(\beta\), of the rate of plastic work converted into heating in thermomechanical processes for elastoplastic solids. A useful, exhaustive, and up-to-date presentation of the problem is given in the introductory section 1. Section 2 ``General thermodynamic considerations'' is a brief summary of fundamentals of general continuum thermodynamics. A one-dimensional internal-variable formulation of classical rate-dependent thermoplasticity is developed in section 3 ``Constitutive description in terms of internal variables''. Thermodynamical processes are described by axial displacement \(u=u(x,t)\) and absolute temperature \(\theta= \theta(x,t)\) depending on the reference coordinate \(x\) and time \(t\). The constitutive equations for axial stress \(\sigma\), internal energy \(e\), enropy \(\eta\), heat flux \(q\) and free energy \(\psi=e-\eta\theta\) as well as evolution equations for plastic strain \(\varepsilon^p\) and hardening \(\xi\) are assumed to depend on variables \((\varepsilon, \varepsilon^p, \xi,\theta, \theta_x)\), where \(\varepsilon= \varepsilon_x\) (the subscripts indicate partial differentiation with respect to the corresponding variable), and \(\theta_x\) is the spatial gradient of \(\theta\). Because the attention is confined to the special case of classical plasticity, the dependence on \(\varepsilon\) and \(\varepsilon^r\) in constitutive and evolution equations appears only through the elastic strain \(\varepsilon^e =\varepsilon-\varepsilon^p\). By using the standard procedure, from the second law of thermodynamics it results that \(\psi\) is independent of \(\theta_x\), i.e. \(\psi= \widehat\psi (\varepsilon^e,\xi, \theta)\), and \(\sigma=\widehat \psi_\varepsilon (\varepsilon^e,\xi, \theta)\), \(\eta=-\widehat\psi_\theta (\varepsilon^e,\xi, \theta)\). The second law of thermodynamics and the energy balance equation take the form \(\delta+ (q\theta_x)/ \theta\geq 0\) and \(q_x+r+\dot Q^e+\dot Q^p=e\dot \theta\), where \(q=\widehat q(\varepsilon^e,\xi, \theta,\theta_x)\), \(\delta= \sigma\dot \varepsilon^p- \widehat\psi_\xi\dot\xi\) is the internal dissipation, \(r\) is the heat supply, \(\dot Q^e=\theta\sigma_\theta\) is the heating due to thermoelastic effects, \(\dot Q^p\) represents the inelastic contribution to the heting, and \(c=-\theta \widehat\psi_{\theta\theta}\) is the specific heat. The fraction \(\beta\) of the plastic work rate \(\dot W^p=\sigma \dot\varepsilon^p\) converted into heating \(\dot Q^p\) is defined by \(\beta=\dot Q^p/\dot W^p\) and depends on \((\varepsilon^e,\xi, \theta,\theta_x)\). The theory is further specialized in section 4 ``Restrictions on the specific heat and stress response function'' and in section 5, ``Further restrictions on the constitutive law'', by imposing some experimentally motivated assumptions: it is supposed that the specific heat \(c\) is independent of \(\xi\) (in section 4), and that \(c\) depends only on \(\theta\) (in section 5). Within the theory of section 4, it is evident that the internal variable \(\xi\) is a measure of the permanent plastic deformation or of the stored energy of the cold work, i.e. the part of the internal energy which is not determined from non-isothermal processes. Evolution equations for \(\varepsilon^p\) and \(\xi\) are discussed in section 6, ``Connection with rate-dependent thermoplasticity'', on the hypotheses of section 5. Thus, the authors' theory is connected to the standard semi-empirical rate-dependent thermoplastic models [\textit{M. A. Meyers}, Dynamic behavior of mateirals. Chichester: Wiley. (1994; Zbl 0893.73002)]. The adiabatic homogeneous processes with a view towards modelling the Kolsky pressure bar experiments are analyzed in section 7 ``Adiabatic thermomechanical processes''. A detailed study of \(\beta\) is undertaken in section 9, ``The fraction of plastic work rate converted into heating'', within the framework specialized in sections 4-7.