Cruciform Specimen Machining Using EDM and a New Design Verification for Biaxial Testing

Cruciform flat specimen is mostly used to investigate experimentally the in-plane biaxial mechanical behavior of sheet metals. In this study, a modified cruciform specimen design is proposed and validated against the performance of current standard design. The existing standard cruciform specimen prepared through laser cutting for sheet metal can accurately provide biaxial stress–strain curve through biaxial tensile test by ensuring superior homogeneous stress and strain field in gauge section. However, preparation of such specimen using laser cut is cumbersome, expensive and prone to errors. The current standard cruciform specimen design features slotted arm of fixed length and width with specific gauge. Few other designs also feature reduced gauge section to localize failure. Both need high precision of laser cutting and machining to prepare specimens which can achieve biaxial stress–strain curve for more than 4% equivalent plastic strain level. The proposed specimen design features running slits in all four arms of specimen with uniform gauge section machined using electrical discharge machining (EDM) owing to higher accuracy and minimum heat-affected zone (HAZ). This technique also avoids machining effects with an understanding that proposed specimen design is to determine the yield behavior of material only. Also, specimen fabricated from as received sheets and without any thickness reduction in gauge area allows the user to keep full thickness in biaxial condition. The modified design qualifies the commonly accepted performance criteria for cruciform specimen, i.e., stress and strain distribution in the gauge section is found to be homogeneous and the biaxial stress–strain curve can be generated until 4% of equivalent plastic strain. The proposed specimen design is evaluated experimentally by conducting biaxial test at various stress ratios, and it is compared with alike experiments using standard specimen design. One automotive grade material, interstitial-Free high-strength (IFHS) steel sheet of thickness 0.70 mm is tested in this study to validate the specimen design.