Investigating the plastic anisotropy and hardening behavior of a commercial Zn–Cu–Ti alloy: Experimental & modeling approach

The aim of this work is to conduct a comprehensive examination of the anisotropic plastic behavior of a sheet of commercial Zn–Cu–Ti alloy, undergoing different quasi-static deformation paths at room temperature. Various mechanical tests are performed, including uniaxial and bi-axial tensile tests, Meuwissen and shear tests, obtaining homogeneous and heterogeneous strain fields. It was observed that under monotonic loading, the material behavior, i.e. stress evolution and ductility, is very sensitive to the loading direction. During reverse loading, the material displays a high Bauschinger effect, with behavior that is strongly dependent on the forward shear direction. For the Meuwissen-like tests, it has been found that the force–displacement curve as well as the maximum ductility are very sensitive to the in-plane anisotropy. The yield parameters are identified by direct comparison of the experimental results with classical anisotropic yield models. Finally, the plastic anisotropic behavior of the investigated zinc sheet is simulated for various mechanical tests using Finite Element Analysis to identify the related hardening parameters.