Strain-Rate Effect on the Stress and Strain Concentration in a Visco-Plastic Plate With An Elliptic Hole

The stress and strain concentration in some component has been a significant topic for structural safety assessment. However, the evaluation of the stress and strain concentration based on the widely existing solutions for linear elastic material under static loading would lead to remarkable errors when the material undergoes the dynamic loading, since the coupling effect induced by the nonlinearity of the stress–strain relationship and the strain-rate strengthening could be of significant influence. Here we analyzed the strain-rate dependent concentration of stress and strain for a visco-plastic plate with an elliptic hole subjected to dynamic loading. The three-dimensional stress and strain are calculated by finite element analyses based on a rate-dependent Johnson–Cook model in which the material constants are set according to a typical visco-plastic standard 45 carbon steel. Our results show that both the plastic stress and strain concentration factors significantly depend on not only the strain but also the strain rate. With the increment of the remote strain rate, the stress concentration monotonically increases, while the strain concentration shows decreasing tendency.