A thermo-elastoplastic constitutive equation including phase transformation and its applications

Heat-processed materials undergoing phase transformation are considered to be a mixture of several phases, and each of them possesses thermo-elastoplastic property. A thermo-elastoplastic constitutive equation involving phase transformation is put forward based on the physics of continuous media and the irreversible thermodynamics with internal variables. The material parameters in the constitutive equation and their variations with temperature are determined by a series of short-time-tension tests at different temperatures. The heat conduction equation including phase transformation and the transformation kinetics equation including stresses are also presented. The numerical algorithm and the finite element procedure related to these equations are developed and applied to the investigation of the distribution of the residual stress in the welding slot area of 1Cr12WMoV stainless steel pipe. The obtained results of the residual stress are in good agreement with the measurements by X-ray diffraction.