Instabilities in membrane tension: Parametric study for large strain thermoplasticity

This paper deals with the numerical analysis of localized deformation for a rectangular plate in membrane tension, modelled with large strain thermoplasticity. The aim is to determine the influence of selected factors on the localization phenomena, which can result from geometrical, material, and thermal softening. Two types of boundary conditions are considered: plane stress and plane strain, as well as two yield functions, Huber–Mises–Hencky and Burzyński–Drucker–Prager, with selected values of friction angle. First, isothermal conditions are considered and next, a conductive case with thermal softening is studied. Moreover, three types of plastic behaviour are analysed: strain hardening (with different values of hardening modulus), ideal plasticity, and strain softening. Numerical tests, performed using AceGen/FEM packages, are carried out for the rectangular plate under tension with an imperfection, using three finite element discretizations. The results for plane strain in the isothermal model show that with the decrease of linear hardening modulus, we can observe stronger mesh sensitivity, while for plane stress, mesh sensitivity is visible for all cases. Furthermore, for the thermomechanical model the results also depend on the mesh density due to insufficient heat conduction regularization.