Plastic energy-based analytical approach to predict the mechanical response of two-phase materials with application to dual-phase steels

A composite made of two phases is considered with a perfect disorder of the phases, and isotropic behavior. The strain hardening behavior of such a composite is modeled under axisymmetric tension. The approach is based on using the strain hardening behavior of the two constituent phases together with a relation between the plastic energy of the two phases. The newly developed analytical model was applied to several dual-phase steel alloys and on iron-silver composite metal. These case studies revealed that the equal-power approach reproduces faithfully the strain hardening behavior of the composite, together with the strain partitioning between the two phases, in good agreement with experiments.