This paper presents an experimental estimation of the ductile behavior and low-cycle fatigue life for widely used structural steels AISI 1020 and AISI 1030 based on continuum damage mechanics approach. This method identifies the deterioration in stiffness of a material arising from micromechanisms of formation, growth, and coalescence of microvoids. This helps the characterization of the ductile flow behavior of metals through a damage variable D, evaluated via load–unload cyclic tensile test. The influence of strain hardening exponent, commonly treated as a constant in ductile flow characterization, is also explored in the current investigation. Its determination uses the Hollomon constitutive relation. Estimated D at different strain levels defines the corresponding effective stress. Application of this stress to the strain equivalence theory then enables the prediction of the stress–strain curve. The model-based results closely approximate the experimental stress–strain curve up to the onset of necking. The agreement of experimental results for fatigue life of the materials from low-cycle fatigue tests with damage-based low-cycle fatigue model demonstrates the correctness of the experimental findings. The damage-based model additionally helps in the prediction of microcrack nucleation and crack propagation life separately. Fractographic examinations of test specimen exhibit usually observed morphology of involved failure mechanisms. The present study emphasizes the experimental means of damage-based ductile flow assessment involving strain hardening exponent term and also the low-cycle fatigue life estimation. The significance of varying strain hardening exponent is further expressed in terms of the corresponding damage magnitude. The material data obtained from this study depicts the damage state at different levels of plastic strain that may serve as a useful information for metal-forming process design.
