A Modified Constitutive Equation for Aluminum Alloy Reinforced by Silicon Carbide Particles at Elevated Temperature

In this paper, the constitutive relationship of an aluminum alloy reinforced by silicon carbide particles is investigated using a new method of double multivariate nonlinear regression (DMNR) in which the strain, strain rate, deformation temperature, and the interaction effect among the strain, strain rate, and deformation temperature are considered. The experimental true stress-strain data were obtained by isothermal hot compression tests on a Gleeble-3500 thermo-mechanical simulator in the temperature range of 623-773 K and the strain rate range of 0.001-10 s(-1). The experiments showed that the material-softening behavior changed with the strain rate, and it changed from dynamic recovery to dynamic recrystallization with an increase in the strain rate. A new constitutive equation has been established by the DMNR; the correlation coefficient (R) and average absolute relative error (AARE) of this model are 0.98 and 7.8%, respectively. To improve the accuracy of the model, separate constitutive relationships were obtained according to the softening behavior. At strain rates of 0.001, 0.01, 0.1, and 1 s(-1), the R and AARE are 0.9865 and 6.0%, respectively; at strain rates of 5 and 10 s(-1), the R and AARE are 0.9860 and 3.0%, respectively. The DMNR gives an accurate and precise evaluation of the flow stress for the aluminum alloy reinforced by silicon carbide particles.