Full-Field Temperature Measurement of Stainless Steel Specimens Subjected to Uniaxial Tensile Loading at Various Strain Rates

This article presents a study on the effect of strain rate, specimen orientation, and plastic strain on the value and distribution of the temperature of dog-bone 1 mm-thick specimens during their deformation in uniaxial tensile tests. Full-field image correlation and infrared thermography techniques were used. A titanium-stabilised austenitic 321 stainless steel was used as test materials. The dog-bone specimens used for uniaxial tensile tests were cut along the sheet metal rolling direction and three strain rates were considered: 4 × 10(−3) s(−1), 8 × 10(−3) s(−1) and 16 × 10(−3) s(−1). It was found that increasing the strain rate resulted in the intensification of heat generation. High-quality regression models (Ra > 0.9) developed for the austenitic 321 steel revealed that sample orientation does not play a significant role in the heat generation when the sample is plastically deformed. It was found that at the moment of formation of a necking at the highest strain rate, the maximum sample temperature increased more than four times compared to the initial temperature. A synergistic effect of the strain hardening exponent and yield stress revealed that heat is generated more rapidly towards small values of strain hardening exponent and yield stress.