Determination of Johnson cook material and failure model constants and numerical modelling of Charpy impact test of armour steel

The behaviour of typical armour steel material under large strains, high strain rates and elevated temperatures needs to be investigated to analyse and reliably predict its response to various types of dynamic loading like impact. An empirical constitutive relation developed by Johnson and Cook (J–C) is widely used to capture strain rate sensitivity of the metals. A failure model proposed by Johnson and Cook is used to model the damage evolution and predict failure in many engineering materials. In this work, model constants of J–C constitutive relation and damage parameters of J–C failure model for a typical armour steel material have been determined experimentally from four types of uniaxial tensile test. Some modifications in the J–C damage model have been suggested and Finite Element simulation of three different tensile tests on armour steel specimens under dynamic strain rate (10−1 s−1), high triaxiality and elevated temperature respectively has been done in ABAQUS platform using the modified J–C failure model as user material sub-routine. The simulation results are validated by the experimental data. Thereafter, a moderately high strain rate event viz. Charpy impact test on armour steel specimen has been simulated using J–C material and failure models with the same material parameters. Reasonable agreement between the simulation and experimental results has been achieved.