Modeling of steel hardening behavior in FEM software

In numeric analyses such as finite element method, correct modeling of material behavior is of great importance. In case of steels, it is theoretically assumed that this structural material has an elastic-plastic behavior while when the plastic behavior becomes critical, this estimation could lead to wrong conclusions. Therefore, modeling the hardening behavior of steel gains importance. This paper illustrates one of the many methods for steel behavior modeling. This method has proved to be accurate and compatible to conventional FEM software.

Keywords:

isotropic hardening , kinematic hardening , finite element method , steel behavior