The multiaxial yield behaviors of 1100-0 aluminum, 70:30 brass, and an overaged 2024 aluminum alloy (2024-T7) have been investigated for a variety of prestress histories involving combinations of normal and shear stresses. Von Mises effective prestrains were in the range of 1.2–32%. Prestress paths were chosen in order to investigate the roles of prestress and prestrain direction on the nature of small-strain offset (ε = 5 × 10−6) yield loci. Particular attention was paid to the directionality, i.e., translation and distortion, of the yield locus. A key result, which was observed in all three materials, was that the final direction of the prestrain path strongly influences the distortions of the yield loci. Differences in the yield locus behavior of the three materials were also observed: brass and the 2024-T7 alloy showed more severe distortions of the yield locus and a longer memory of their entire prestrain history than the 1100-0 aluminum. In addition, more “kinematic” translation of the subsequent yield loci was observed in brass and 2024-T7 than in 1100-0 aluminum. The 2024-T7 differed from the other materials, showing a yield locus which decreased in size subsequent to plastic straining. Finally, the implications of these observations for the constitutive modeling of multiaxial material behavior are discussed.
