Viscoplastic behaviour of steels during phase transformations

That contribution to transformation plasticity of steels arising from the so-called Greenwood-Johnson mechanism is often described using the model developed by Leblond and coworkers. This model made the assumption of purely plastic behaviour. It is extended here to incorporate viscous effects, which are present during some transformations, especially at high temperatures. The predictions of the original and extended models are compared to experimental results for a material for which the second contribution to transformation plasticity, due to the so-called Magee mechanism, is known to be negligible, and it is shown that the incorporation of viscous effects into the model significantly improves its predictions. (C) 2003 Academie des sciences. Published by Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.