The dynamic compressive behavior and constitutive model of SA508-3 steel at high strain rates under elevated temperatures

The SA508-3 steel has been acknowledged as nuclear-grade steel used to manufacture power plant components owing to its high strength, good toughness, and low sensitivity to irradiation embrittlement. In this study, the dynamic mechanical properties of SA508-3 steel are investigated by the split Hopkinson pressure bar tests with a wide range of strain rates (0.0001–6000 s −1 ) and elevated temperatures (20–600 °C), and the corresponding flow stress curves are obtained. The results suggested that the dynamic stress–strain response of SA508-3 steel is dependent both on the strain rate and temperature, and the temperature sensitivity ( n a ) is independent of the strain rate. Based on the experimental results, a constitutive model is built by Johnson–Cook (J-C) model to describe the dynamical property of SA508-3 steel, and the flow stresses predicted by the established J-C constitutive model at all the tested strain rates and temperatures are in good agreement with the experimental data. Furthermore, a successful finite element (FE) analysis of the milling process of SA508-3 steel at different cutting parameters is carried out by implementing the established J-C constitutive model into the third-wave-AdvantEdge software, and the predicted cutting forces are agreed well with the experimental results, which provides a strong support for the FE analysis of SA508-3 steel milling process. Graphical Abstract