Constitutive Model for the Thermo-viscoplastic Behavior of Hexagonal Close-Packed Metals with Application to Ti–6Al–4V Alloy

In this paper, a new physically based constitutive model is developed for hexagonal close-packed metals, especially the Ti–6Al–4V alloy, subjected to high strain rate and different temperatures based on the microscopic mechanism of plastic deformation and the theory of thermally activated dislocation motion. A global analysis of constitutive parameters based on the Latin Hypercube Sampling method and the Spearman’s rank correlation method is adopted in order to improve the identification efficiency of parameters. Then, an optimal solution of constitutive parameters as a whole is obtained by using a global genetic algorithm composed of an improved niche genetic algorithm, a global peak determination strategy and the local accurate search techniques. It is concluded that the proposed constitutive modal can accurately describe the Ti–6Al–4V alloy’s dynamic behavior because the prediction results of the model are in good agreement with the experimental data.