Abstract
Abstract
The time‐dependent inhomogeneous temperature distribution during the cooling of steel plates gives rise to thermal strains which, in turn, generate plastification and thus residual stresses. Moreover, transformation from the parent austenite phase into a product phase typically entails not only metallurgical strains but also accounts for transformation induced plasticity (TRIP), which again generates transformation related residual stresses. It is the goal of this paper to build a unified model that takes into account all relevant contributions to the total strain rate, i.e., elastic, plastic, thermal, metallurgical and TRIP strain contributions. The material parameters relevant for TRIP are determined by means of dilatometric tests as well as by purely numerical means. For the evolution of the product phase a kinetic relationship will be presented that allows differentiating between different local cooling rates. It is set up with an Avrami‐like approach, specially designed for complex cooling histories. The material model is implemented into the commercial finite element package ABAQUS, which allows to simulate the evolution of the residual stresses in heavy steel plates after complete cool‐down to room temperature.