International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170

www.elsevier.com/locate/ijplas

Inverse approach to identification of material

parameters of cyclic elasto-plasticity for
component layers of a bimetallic sheet
F. Yoshidaa,*, M. Urabeb, R. Hinoa,1, V.V. Toropovc
a
Department of Mechanical System Engineering, Hiroshima University, 1-4-1, Kagamiyama,
Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8527, Japan
b
Graduate School of Hiroshima University, Hiroshima University, 1-4-1, Kagamiyama,
Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8527, Japan
c
School of Engineering, University of Bradford, Bradford, West Yorkshire BD7 1DP, UK

Received in revised form 19 August 2002

Abstract
The present paper proposes a novel approach to the identification of the mechanical prop-
erties of individual component layers of a bimetallic sheet. In this approach, a set of material
parameters in a constitutive model of cyclic elasto-plasticity are identified for the two layers of
the sheet simultaneously by minimizing the difference between the experimental results and
the corresponding results of numerical simulation. This method has an advantage of using the
experimental data (tensile load vs strain curve in the uniaxial tension test and the bending
moment vs curvature diagram in the cyclic bending test) for a whole bimetallic sheet but not
for individual component layers. An optimization technique based on the iterative multipoint
approximation concept is used for the identification of the material parameters. This paper
describes the experimentation, the fundamentals and the technique of the identification, and
the verification of this approach using two types of constitutive models (the Chaboche-Rous-
selier and the Prager models) for an aluminum clad stainless steel sheet.
# 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: B. Constitutive behaviour; B. Layered materials; B. Elastic–plastic material; C. Optimization

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +81-824-24-7541; fax: +81-824-22-7193.

E-mail address: yoshida@mec.hiroshima-u.ac.jp (F. Yoshida).
1
Current address: Materials and Processing Research Center, NKK Co. Ltd., 1, Kokan-cho,
Fukuyama, Hiroshima 721-8510, Japan

0749-6419/03/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0749-6419(03)00063-9
2150 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170

1. Introduction

In recent years, bimetallic sheets which consist of dissimilar metal components,

such as stainless steel/aluminum, copper/steel, etc., have been widely used in many
industrial fields because of their excellent mechanical and functional properties (e.g.,
Kim and Yu, 1997; Yoshida, 1997). It is already known that the press-formability of
bimetallic sheets is quite different from that of their individual component sheets
(e.g., Hawkins and Wright, 1971; Verguts and Sowerby, 1975; Semiatin and Piehler,
1979b,c; Majlessi and Dadras, 1983; Yoshida et al., 1995; Yoshida and Hino, 1997;
Yoshida and Urabe, 2000).
The prediction of the formability of a bimetallic sheet would be possible if the
mechanical properties of its individual component metals, as well as its layer thick-
ness ratio, are given (Yoshida et al., 1995; Yoshida and Hino, 1997). In order to
determine the mechanical properties, uniaxial tension tests are usually performed on
each metal layer taken from the bimetallic sheet by a mechanical or chemical pro-
cessing (Semiatin and Piehler, 1979a; Yoshida and Hino, 1997). However, such ten-
sion tests have the following drawbacks:

a time-consuming process of the removal of a layer from a bimetallic sheet by

a mechanical or chemical processing is necessary for the preparation of the
specimens,

the stress–strain responses during cyclic loading cannot be obtained because
of the buckling of the sheet in compression, although it is very important for
sheet metal forming simulations to employ a constitutive model which
properly describes the cyclic behavior of sheet metals (Yoshida and Urabe,
1999; Yoshida, 2000; Wagoner et al., 2000; Chun et al., 2002a,b; Yoshida et
al., 2002; Yoshida and Uemori, 2002).

If the determination of mechanical parameters of cyclic elasto-plasticity of a

bimetallic sheet became possible without performing such a time-consuming process
of the removal of a layer, it would be a considerable technological achievement.
In order to identify a set of material parameters in a constitutive model of cyclic
elasto-plasticity, which describes the complicated stress–strain responses including
the deformation characterizations of the Bauschinger effect and cyclic strain-hard-
ening, for monolithic sheet metals, the present authors (Yoshida et al., 1998) first
proposed an idea of using cyclic bending tests. In that research, material parameters
were identified by minimizing the difference between the test results and the results
of the corresponding numerical simulation using an advanced optimization tech-
nique developed by Toropov et al. (1993).
Recently, similar approaches to material parameter identification of sheet metals
from bending tests were reported by Zhao et al. (2001) and Geng et al. (2002).
As an extension of the cyclic bending method, the present paper proposes a novel
approach to the identification of material parameters of the individual component
layers in a bimetallic sheet without the time-consuming process of removal of a
layer. A set of material parameters in a constitutive model of cyclic elasto-plasticity
 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170 2151

are identified using two different types of experimental data, namely, the tensile load
versus strain curve in the uniaxial tension test and the bending moment versus cur-
vature diagram in the cyclic bending test, for a whole bimetallic sheet but not for
individual component layers. This paper describes the experimentation, the funda-
mentals and the technique of the identification, and the verification of this approach
using an aluminum clad stainless steel sheet.

2. Scheme of the material parameter identification

The procedure of the present identification problem is schematically illustrated in

Fig. 1. In order to determine the stress–strain response for the two individual com-
ponent layers of a bimetallic sheet, at least two different types of experimental data
of the mechanical response are required. In this research, the tensile load vs axial
strain curve in the uniaxial tension test and the bending moment vs curvature dia-
gram in the cyclic bending test have been used. A set of material parameters in a
constitutive model of cyclic elasto-plasticity are identified for the two layers of the
sheet simultaneously by minimizing the difference between the experimental results
and the corresponding results of numerical simulation.

2.1. Experimentation

For the experiments, a stainless steel clad aluminum sheet consisting of 1.2 mm
aluminum (A1100) layer and 0.55 mm stainless-steel (type-430SS) layer, as shown in
Fig. 2, was employed. In the cyclic bending test, as shown in Fig. 3, one end of a
specimen was clamped and rotated by a step motor, and the other end was moving
freely in x–y directions without rotation. The above condition of the test can be
regarded as uniform bending, in which the bending moment is uniformly distributed
in the longitudinal direction of the sheet. The bending moment was measured by a
load-cell, and the curvature of the specimen was determined from the surface strains
measured by strain gauges bonded on both surfaces of the specimen. The second
type of experiment (uniaxial tension) produces the tensile load vs strain curve.
In order to verify the identified material parameters, uniaxial tension tests were
also performed with the stainless steel specimen which had been taken from the clad
sheet, and its stress–strain curve was obtained. The stress–strain curve of the alu-
minum layer was determined using the rule of mixtures by use of the results of uni-
axial tension tests both for the clad sheet and the stainless steel layer.

2.2. Constitutive models

In order to describe the stress–strain response of metals under cyclic deformation,

two types of constitutive models were used, i.e., one was a model of cyclic plasticity
based on the model proposed by Chaboche and Rousselier (1983) (hereafter we call
it ‘the Chaboche–Rousselier model’), and the other was the linear kinematic hard-
ening model proposed by Prager (1956) (‘the Prager model’).
2152 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170

Fig. 1. Scheme of the material parameter identification for a bimetallic sheet.

: : :
The strain rate " is decomposed into elastic and plastic components, "e and "p , as
: : :
" ¼ "e þ "p : ð1Þ

The yield function f and the associated flow rule are given by the equations:

1 1 : @f :
f ¼ ðS  Þ : ðS  Þ  ðY þ RÞ2 ; "p ¼ l; ð2Þ
2 3 @S
 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170 2153

Fig. 2. Stainless steel (type-430) clad aluminium (A1100) specimen used in the experiments.

Fig. 3. Schematic illustration of experimental setup for cyclic bending test.

where S and  denote the stress deviatior and the backstress deviatior, respectively,
and Y and R stand for the initial yield stress and the isotropic hardening stress,
respectively. The evolution of the isotropic hardening stress is given by


: : : 2 : p : p 1=2
R ¼ bðQ  RÞ" ; " ¼ " :" : ð3Þ
3

Chaboche and Rousselier (1983) have given the expression for the backstress evolu-
tion as a summation of several backstress components of the Armstrong and Frederick
(1966) type (so-called ‘A-F model’). Instead of many A-F components, here we use one
of the simplest expressions of the backstress which consists of one linear kinematic
hardening component and one A-F component (Yoshida, 1995), 1 and 2, as
 ¼ 1 þ 2 : ð4Þ

The linear kinematic hardening rule is

: 2 :
 1 ¼ H0 " p : ð5Þ
3

The A-F kmodel is


: 2 : :
2 ¼ C a"p  " 2 : ð6Þ
3
2154 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170

The above constitutive model incorporates eight material parameters: two elastic
constants E (Young’s modulus) and  (Poisson’s ratio); the initial yield stress Y;
parameters Q and b for the isotropic hardening rule; and three parameters a, C and
H0 for the kinematic hardening rules. If the linear kinematic hardening rule is
exclusively considered in this constitutive model, in which the material parameter of
plasticity is H0 only, it yields the Prager kinematic hardening model. The meanings
of these material parameters in both models—how they reflect shapes of calculated
stress–strain curves under cyclic straining—are schematically shown in Fig. 4(a)–(c).

2.3. Numerical simulation and identification of material parameters

For the analysis of uniaxial tension, the isostrain condition for both the compo-
nent layers of the sheet was assumed. The bending moment was calculated for a
given curvature based on the Kirchhoff–Love hypothesis with the assumption of the
uniform bending under plane strain condition. The assumption has been verified by
comparing the bending moment versus curvature curve from a 3D FEM simulation
of bending and the one from the plane-strain uniform bending.
A set of material parameters in each of the above constitutive models were iden-
tified using two different types of experimental data simultaneously, namely, the
tensile load vs strain curve (P vs ") in the uniaxial tension test and the bending
moment vs curvature diagram (M vs ) in the cyclic bending test. The identification
was carried out by minimizing the difference between the experimental results and
the corresponding results of numerical simulation. To make clearer our idea of using
experimental data of uniaxial tension and cyclic bending, here we shall discuss how
strongly each material parameter reflects some specific mechanical responses in ten-
sion (load vs strain curve: P vs ") and bending (bending moment vs curvature dia-
gram: M vs ). Let us consider a two-ply laminate consisting of materials A and B,

Fig. 4. Schematic illustrations of cyclic stress–strain (–") responses calculated by constitutive models:
(a) the Chaboche–Rousselier model excluding isotropic hardening; (b) the  Chaboche–Rousselier
 model
including isotropic hardening; and (c) the Prager model, where H ~ i ¼ H0 = 1 þ H0 =Ei , i=A or B.
i i
 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170 2155

whose layer thickness are tA and tB. For easier understanding, we shall begin our
discussion with non-isotropic hardening materials.

(i) Young’s moduli, EA and EB, can be directly determined from the linear
(elastic) parts of P–" relationship (see schematic illustration Fig. 5(a): P=K";
and Fig. 5(b): P=(tAEA+tBEB)") and M– relationship (see schematic
illustrations Fig. 6(a) and (b), where elastic bending rigidity, De, can be
explicitly determined as a function of elasticity parameters: EA, EB, A and B,
and layer thicknesses: tA and tB), since we have two linear equations from
them for two unknown values of EA and EB.
(ii) When calculating P–" curve using the Chaboche–Rousselier model, it will
show transient workhardening (highly nonlinear P–" relationship) just after

Fig. 5. Schematic illustrations of load vs strain (P vs ") responses under uniaxial tension: (a) experimental
result; and (b) calculated result by the Chaboche–Rousselier model.
2156 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170

Fig. 6. Schematic illustrations of bending moment vs curvature (M vs k) responses under cyclic bending:
(a) non-isotropic-hardening materials; and (b) isotropic-hardening materials. Elastic bending rigidity, De,
can be explicitly determined as a function of elasticity parameters: EA, EB, A and B, and layer thick-
nesses: tA and tB. Slope D1 (asymptotic elastic-plastic rigidity) is a function of asymptotic hardening
ratios of plasticity, H0A and H0B , together with the elasticity parameters and the layer thicknesses.

the onset of yielding, and then it approaches a linear line given by the
equation [see schematic illustration in Fig. 5(b)]:
h i
~ 0 þ tB H
P ¼ ½tA ðYA þ aA Þ þ tB ðYB þ aB Þ þ tA H ~ 0 ð"  "
Þ; ð7aÞ
A B

~i ¼ H0i
H ; ði ¼ A or BÞ: ð7bÞ
1 þ H0i =Ei

If we have an experimental P–" curve which approaches a line of

P=P*+k(""*), as shown in Fig. 5(a), we have the following relationships:
 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170 2157

tA ðYA þ aA Þ þ tB ðYB þ aB Þ ¼ P
; ð8aÞ

~ 0 þ tB H
tA H ~ 0 ¼ k: ð8bÞ
A B

In these equations, it is impossible to split P* (and k) into two parts, one is the
contribution by material
 A and the other by B, such as PA
¼ tA ðYA þ aA Þ and

PB ¼ tB ðYB þ aB Þ kA ¼ tA H~ 0 and kB ¼ tB H ~ 0 . However, if we employ, together

A B
with
ð Eqs. (7) and (8), the following M– relationship:
y ydA ¼ M for a given ; ð9aÞ
ð
under the constraint of y dA ¼ 0; ð9bÞ

the determination of parameters (Y+a) and H0 , for each material, will become possible.

(iii) Material parameters a and C, as well as the yield-strength differential between

YA and YB, directly reflect the shapes of highly nonlinear parts of P–" curve, and
also M– diagram. It should be noted that the nonlinear M– relationship is not
only due to the materials’ nonlinear stress-strain characteristics, but also to the
behavior of propagation of plastic zone from the sheet surfaces to the neutral
surface with increasing bending curvature. Therefore, to identify parameters a
and C, experimental data of both P vs " and M vs  are essential.
(iv) If materials exhibit cyclic hardening characteristics under cyclic bending [see
schematic illustration Fig 6(b)], it is directly related to parameters of isotropic
hardening, b and Q [refer to Fig. 4(b)].

From the above discussion, it has been clarified that each material parameter
strongly reflects some specific mechanical responses in uniaxial tension and cyclic
bending. Therefore, it would be possible to identify these material parameters, for
individual component layers of a bimetallic sheet, from experimental data of uni-
axial tension and cyclic bending.

3. Formulation of the material parameter identification problem

3.1. General formulation

Let us consider the material parameters in a constitutive model to be identified as

components of the vector x 2 RN . Then the optimization problem can be formulated
as follows (Toropov et al., 1993, 1997): Find the vector x that minimizes the objec-
tive function
XL
FðxÞ ¼
F ðxÞ
¼1
Ai 4 xi 4 Bi ði ¼ 1; . . . ; NÞ; ð10Þ
2158 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170

where L is the total number of individual specific response quantities (denoted by )

which can be measured in the course of experiments and then obtained as a result of
the numerical simulation. F (x) is the dimensionless function:
( ) ( )
X
S
    2
X
S
  2
F ðxÞ ¼ Rs  R x; s = Rs ð11Þ
s¼1 s¼1

which measures the deviation between the computed th individual response and the
observed one from the experiment. Here, the notations denote  : a parameter which
defines the history of the process in the course of the experiment (e.g., the time or the
loading parameter), s ð ¼ 1; . . . ; L; s ¼ 1; . . . ; SÞ: the discrete values of  for
Sth data point, Rs : the value of the -th measured response  quantity
 corresponding
to the value of the experiment history parameter s , R x; s : the value of the same
response quantity obtained from the numerical simulation.
: the weight coefficient
which determines the relative contribution of information yielded by the -th set of
experimental data, Ai, Bi: side constraints, stipulated by some additional physical
considerations, which define the search region in the space RN of optimization
parameters.
The optimization problem (10) has the following characteristic features:

the objective function is an implicit function of parameters x,

to calculate values of this function for the specific set of parameters x means
to use a nonlinear numerical (e.g. finite element) simulation of the process
under consideration, which may involve a large amount of computer time;

function values present some level of numerical noise, i.e., they can only be
estimated with a finite accuracy.

The direct implementation of conventional nonlinear mathematical programming

techniques would involve a large amount of computer time, and most importantly,
the convergence of the optimization cannot be guaranteed due to the presence of
numerically induced noise in the objective function values, and even more so, its
derivatives. To solve the problem, the iterative multipoint approximation concept
(Toropov et al., 1993) is used, where computationally expensive and noisy functions,
F (x), ( =1,. . .,L) are replaced by simplified noiseless functions obtained by the
least-squares fitting. Further details of this technique used to solve the identification
problem can be found in references by Toropov et al. (1993, 1997) and Yoshida et
al. (1998).
The specific form of the multipoint approximation technique, used in this work, is
based on the algorithm of sequential quadratic programming (SQP) which builds up
an approximation of the inverse of the Hessian matrix using the objective function
values and its derivatives. It should be noted that in the problems of parameter
identification for nonlinear constitutive models the traditional use of finite differ-
ences for evaluation of derivatives would spoil the convergence of the optimizer
because the accuracy of derivatives is severely affected by the numerical noise. As
 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170 2159

the approximations are constructed in each iteration to evaluate the derivatives only,
fairly simple approximation types can be used, e.g. quadratic polynomials without
cross-terms:
N 
X 
F~ k ðx; a Þ ¼ a 0 þ a 2ði1Þþ1 xi þ a 2ði1Þþ2 x2i ð12Þ
i¼1

which contains 2N+1 tuning parameters to be found in each iteration by the least-
squares surface fitting.

3.2. The present identification problem

The identification of the above material parameters, excluding Poisson’s ratio ,

which was found to be =0.3 for both the stainless steel and the aluminum layers
from the conventional measurements, was performed using the tension (tensile load
vs strain :P vs ") curve ( =1) and several individual bending/reversed bending
(bending moment vs curvature: M vs ) diagrams ( =2,. . ., L) which are regarded
as individual response quantities. As for Youngs’ moduli, they could be identified
directly from elastic parts of P–" and M– relationships, as already discussed in
Section 2.3; however, in the present work, Young’s modulus is also treated as one of
material parameters to be identified simultaneously. Here in the identification
problem for the Chaboche–Rousselier model,

the optimization variables x =[x1,x2,. . .,x14] are the material parameters for 
the two layers: ðE; Y; Q; b; H0 ; a; CÞstainless steel ; ðE; Y; Q; b; H0 ; a; CÞaluminum ,

the set of values of Rs corresponds to the set of values of the tensile load
Rs1 ¼ P (for =1); and experimental bending moment Rs ¼ Ms (for
=2,. . ., L) both
 of which
 are found from the experiment, Ð

the function R x; s corresponds to the calculated Ð tensile load R 1 ¼ y dA
(for =1), and bending moment R ¼ M ¼ y ydA (for =2, . . ., L),

the experiment history parameter s1 is the strain " s in uniaxial tension for
=1; and s (for =2, . . ., L) is the curvature  s ,

the index is 1 for the uniaxial tension, 2 for the first monotonic bending, 3
for the subsequent reversed bending, etc. in Eqs. Ð (10)–(12),

under bending, a constraint condition of y dA ¼ 0 (non axial load) is
considered.

All the response quantities were considered equally weighted (

1=
2=. . .=1) in the
formulation of the objective function F(x). In addition, for the discussion on the
effect of the weighting coefficients, the identification for the case of weighting of

1=1 (for uniaxial tension),

2=
3=. . .=0.5 (for cyclic bending) was partly carried
out.
The identification of material parameters  E, Y and H0 in the Prager model was also
performed, where x ¼ ½x1 ; x2 ; . . . ; x6 ¼ ðE; Y; H Þstainless steel ; ðE; Y; H0 Þaluminum .
0
2160 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170

4. Results of parameter identification and discussion

The material parameters were identified using two sets of experimental data of the
bimetallic sheet, i.e., the tensile load vs strain curve (see Fig. 7); and the bending
moment vs curvature (see Fig. 8). Fig. 7(a) and (b) show the comparison of the experi-
mental results of the tensile load vs strain curve in uniaxial tension tests for the bime-
tallic sheet and the corresponding results calculated with the constitutive models of the
Chaboche–Rousselier type and the Prager type, respectively, incorporating the identi-
fied sets of material parameters. The results of cyclic bending and the corresponding

Fig. 7. Comparisons of experimental curves of tensile load vs strain (P vs ") in uniaxial tension and the
result of simulations with the constitutive models incorporating the sets of material parameters identified
from uniaxial tension and cyclic bending tests of the bimetallic sheet: (a) the Chaboche–Rousselier model;
and (b) the Prager model.
 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170 2161

Fig. 8. Comparisons of experimental diagrams of bending moment vs curvature (M vs k) and the results
of simulations with the constitutive models incorporating the sets of material parameters identified from
uniaxial tension and cyclic bending tests of the bimetallic sheet: (a) the Chaboche–Rousselier model; and
(b) the Prager model.

numerical simulations are shown in Fig. 8(a) and (b). The load vs strain curve cal-
culated with the Chaboche–Rousselier model fits the experimental results well,
whereas the Prager model cannot simulate the nonlinear part of the curve near the
initial yield point [see Fig. 7(b)]. The sets of material parameters identified for both
the models are listed in Tables 1 and 2. The material parameter identifications were
carried out several times by changing the initial guesses of the parameters, and their
search regions [i.e., side constraints Ai and Bi in Eq. (10)], and consequently, it was
found that the differences in the obtained results between the trials were negligibly
small. This would be an indirect verification of the uniqueness of solution for the
present problem. As already mentioned in Sections 2.2. and 2.3., each material
parameter clearly represents some of materials’ cyclic stress–strain characteristics
[see Fig. 4(a)–(c)], and it also directly reflects some of specific mechanical responses,
2162 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170

Table 1
Identified material parameters in the Chaboche–Rousselier model for stainless steel clad aluminum sheet

E (GPa) Y0 (MPa) H01 (MPa) a (MPa) C Q (MPa) b

Aluminum 71.2 56.2 707 29.2 1210 0 0

Stainless steel 204.3 308.1 996 277.3 935 0 0

Table 2
Identified material parameters in the Prager model for stainless steel clad aluminum sheet

E (GPa) Y0 (MPa) H01 (MPa)

Aluminum 56.7 82.6 789

Stainless steel 234.1 538.1 7532

such as the transient and asymptotic workhardening behavior in P–" curve [see
Fig. 5(a) and (b)], the increase in bending-moment peaks under cyclic bending with
number of cycles [see Fig. 6(a) and (b), in our experiment, non-cyclic-hardening was
observed, and consequently, the optimizer gave us an answer of b and Q=0], etc.
This would be a reason why we have succeeded in obtaining a unique solution.
Fig. 9(a) and (b) show the stress–strain curves calculated with the models using the
identified material parameters for the stainless steel and the aluminum in the bime-
tallic sheet. Both the component metals exhibit almost no cyclic strain-hardening
because they possess large plastic prestrain induced during the cladding by the roll-
bonding process. In order to check the accuracy of this identification method, the
calculated stress–strain curves for the individual component metals were compared
with the experimental stress–strain curves [see Fig. 10(a) and (b)]. The results cal-
culated with the Chaboche–Rousselier model agree fairly well with those obtained in
the experiments. However, by the Prager model, the predicted strain-hardening
coefficient H0 ¼ d=d"p for the stainless steel is apparently larger than the experi-
mental value. It is not attributed to the problem of the identification procedure, but
to the fact that the Prager model cannot describe the nonlinear stress–strain rela-
tionship near the initial yield point. Fig. 11 shows the surface strain responses (strain
of the aluminum versus one of the stainless steel) during cyclic bending calculated by
the Chaboche–Rousselier model together with the corresponding experimental
results. These simulated results agree with those obtained in experiments.
There might be several reasons for a certain discrepancy between the experimental
stress—strain curves and the calculated results shown in Fig. 10(a) and (b). For the
case of the Chaboche–Rousselier model, the discrepancy is not due to the material
model itself, but for the case of Prager model, as already mentioned above, less
flexible bi-linear modeling strongly affects the result. Even when using exclusively
the experimental stress–strain curve of the stainless steel for the optimization, a
certain discrepancy due to bi-linear modeling in the Prager model still remains, while
good result is obtained by the Chaboche–Rousselier model [see Fig. 12(a) and (b)].
As far as the Chaboche–Rousselier model is concerned, the agreements between the
experimental data and the corresponding results of numerical simulations, both for
 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170 2163

Fig. 9. Cyclic stress–strain responses, for the stainless steel and aluminium layers in the bimetallic sheet,
calculated with the constitutive models incorporating the sets of material parameters identified from uni-
axial tension and cyclic bending tests of the bimetallic sheet: (a) the Chaboche–Rousselier model; and
(b) the Prager model.

the uniaxial tension (Fig. 7) and the cyclic bending (Fig. 8) of the bimetallic sheet,
are rather good. Hence, it would be concluded that the assumption of equally
weighted (
1=
2=. . .=1) response quantities of uniaxial tension ( =1) and each
bending/unbending ( =2, 3, . . .) is acceptable, and small change of the weighting
parameters might have minor effect. For the case of the Prager model, on the con-
trary, the values of weighting coefficients may have some effect on the results. For
2164 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170

Fig. 10. Comparisons of the stress–strain curves in uniaxial tension and the calculated results with the
constitutive models for the stainless steel (SS) and aluminum (Al) layers in the bimetallic sheet: (a) the
Chaboche–Rousselier model; and (b) the Prager model. The sets of material parameters were identified
using the experimental data of uniaxial tension and cyclic bending.

example, when using the smaller values of weighting coefficients for cyclic bending,
slightly smaller value of strain-hardening coefficient H0 was obtained [e.g., for the
case of
1=1 (for uniaxial tension) and
2=
3=. . .=0.5 (for cyclic bending),
H0 =6743, while for the equally weighted case H0 =7532]. Even so, the main cause of
the discrepancy in this model was not the bad choice of the weighting parameters,
but less flexible model itself. The residual stress which had been induced in each
metal during cladding by roll-bonding process would also affect the results, since the
effect of the residual stress on P–" curve would not just the same as that on M–
diagram, however, its details were not examined in the present work. Another pos-
sible reason for the discrepancy would be the non-J2 effect (or anistropy) of the
 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170 2165

Fig. 11. Comparison of experimental surface strains [strain of the aluminum (Al) versus that of the
stainless steel (SS)] during cyclic bending and the calculated result with the Chaboche–Rousselier model
incorporating the sets of material parameters identified from uniaxial tension and cyclic bending tests of
the bimetallic sheet.

materials. In the present work, the yield function was assumed to be J2 (von Mises)
type. However, it is well known that some metals are not J2 type, e.g., aluminum
and its alloys are rather Tresca-material (e.g., Shiratori et al., 1976a,b; Kanetake et
al., 1981), and in some cases texture-induced anisotropy would also exist. Since the
plane-strain flow stress, which appears under sheet bending, is directly related to the
types of yield function employed in the calculation, the choice of yield function is
very important for the material parameter identification using sheet bending
experiments. Generally speaking, to obtain the proper material parameters of plas-
ticity, the experimental data of enough large strain are essential (at least, a strain
value where the transient workhardening [or transient Bauschinger effect] finishes is
necessary, and ‘‘how large?’’ is also dependent on applications, e.g., for ordinal sheet
metal forming the required strain would be level of more than 0.2, but for structural
element applications it would not be so large). Furthermore, if the component
materials have significant cyclic hardening nature, data of enough numbers of
bending cycles, until the cyclic hardening stabilization takes place, will be necessary.
In order to illustrate the convergence of the optimization process, the change of
the square root of the objective function F(x) as a function of the number of itera-
tions is shown in Fig. 13, in both cases of using the Chaboche–Rousselier and the
Prager models. From this figure, it is found that the objective function approaches to
a small asymptotic value after some 10 iterations in both the cases. The CPU time for
the identification with the Chaboche–Rousselier model was about 26 min by EWS
SUN Ultra 1 (140 MHz) (SPEC fp95: 7.9), and 9 min in the case of using the Prager
model. Such a great difference in CPU time depending on the type of constitutive
models is attributed to the difference of the numbers of material parameters to be
identified (14 parameters for the Chaboche–Rousselier model and six parameters for
2166 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170

Fig. 12. Comparisons of the stress–strain curve in uniaxial tension and the calculated results with the
constitutive models for the stainless steel layer in the bimetallic sheet: (a) the Chaboche–Rousselier model;
and (b) the Prager model. The sets of material parameters were identified using exclusively the experi-
mental data of uniaxial tension of the stainless steel (E=204.0 GPa, Y=358.1 MPa, a =206.3 MPa,
C=1525, H01 ¼ 30:0 MPa for the Chaboche–Rosselier model; and E=204.2 GPa, Y=528.7 MPa, H01 ¼
5999 MPa for the Prager model, cf. Tables 1 and 2).

the Prager model). About 90% of the CPU time was consumed by the calculation of
bending moment.
Furthermore, instead of using the set of experimental data of tensile load vs strain
in uniaxial tension and bending moment vs curvature in cyclic bending, as discussed
above, we may use the other mechanical responses, e.g., the bending moment vs
surface strains in cyclic bending for both the stainless and aluminum layers. Fig. 14
shows the calculated stress–strain curves for the stainless steel and the aluminum by
the constitutive model which incorporates the identified material parameters using
 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170 2167

Fig. 13. Change of the square root of the objective function F(x) with increasing number of iteration.

Fig. 14. Comparison of the stress–strain curves and the simulated results with the Chaboche–Rousselier
model incorporating the identified set of material parameters for the stainless steel (SS) and aluminum
(Al) layers in the bimetallic sheet. The material parameter identification is based on the experimental data
of surface strains.

only the surface strain data, together with the experimental stress–strain curves. In
Fig. 14, a certain discrepancy between the simulated stress–strain curves and the
experimental results is found, whereas the simulated results for the bending moment
and curvature agree well with the experimental results (see Fig. 15). One of the rea-
sons for the discrepancy is that the strain in the cyclic bending is not large enough
for the determination of plastic properties. Especially for the bimetallic sheet, strain
in the stainless steel layer is much smaller than in the aluminum layer because of the
shift of the neutral surface from the mid-plane of the sheet (Verguts and Sowerby,
1975; Majlessi and Dadras, 1983). If the curvature in the cyclic bending test had
2168 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170

Fig. 15. Comparison of experimental diagram of bending moment versus curvature and the simulated
result with the constitutive model incorporating the identified set of material parameters. The material
parameter identification is based on the experimental data of surface strains.

been large enough, the results of the identification would have been better. However,
in practice, it is not so easy to give large surface strains by bending for thin sheet
metals, therefore, the use of experimental data of both uniaxial tension and cyclic
bending is recommended for material parameter identification for bimetallic sheets.

5. Concluding remarks

A method for the identification of mechanical properties of the individual com-

ponent layers in a bimetallic sheet by a mixed experimental–numerical approach has
been presented. As an example, for a stainless steel clad aluminum sheet, a set of
material parameters in each of two constitutive models of cyclic elasto-plasticity: a
nonlinear kinematic/isotropic hardening model (the Chaboche–Rousselier model)
and a linear kinematic hardening model (the Prager model), have been successfully
identified by using the experimental data of the uniaxial tension and cyclic bending.
It should be noted that an advanced optimization technique based on the iterative
multipoint approximation concept allows us to solve the present identification
problem within an acceptable calculation time. By this new approach to material
parameter identification, the determination of mechanical properties of a bimetallic
sheet has become possible without performing a time-consuming process of the
removal of a layer from the sheet for the preparation of the specimens. It is a con-
siderable technological achievement. Moreover, it should be emphasized that this
approach allows us to identify material parameters not only for the monotonic
deformation but also for the cyclic behavior characterized by the Bauschinger effect
and the cyclic hardening nature of materials.
 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170 2169

Acknowledgements

The present work has been done within a Royal Society joint project ‘Optimiza-
tion and Inverse Problems of Large Deformation Plasticity’ between University of
Bradford and Hiroshima University, as well as a Monbukagakusho (The Ministry
of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan) project, grant-in aid
for scientific research No. 12555029.

References

Armstrong, P.J., Frederick, C.O., 1966. A mathematical representation of the multiaxial Bauschinger
effect (GEGB report RD/B/N731). Berkeley Nuclear Laboratories.
Chaboche, J.L., Rousselier, G., 1983. On the plastic and viscoplastic constitutive equations, part I and II.
ASME J. Pressure Vessel Technol. 105, 153–164.
Chun, B.K., Jinn, J.T., Lee, J.K., 2002a. Modeling the Bauschinger effect for sheet metals, part I: theory.
Int. J. Plasticity 18, 571–595.
Chun, B.K., Jinn, J.T., Lee, J.K., 2002b. Modeling the Bauschinger effect for sheet metals, part II:
applications. Int. J. Plasticity 18, 597–616.
Geng, L., Shen, Y., Wagoner, R.H., 2002. Anisotropic hardening equations derived from reverse-bending
testing. Int. J. Plasticity 18, 743–767.
Hawkins, R., Wright, J.C., 1971. Mechanical properties and press-formability of copper/mild steel sand-
wich sheet materials. J. Inst. Metal. 99, 357–371.
Kanetake, K., Tozawa, Y., Kato, T., Aiba, S., 1981. Effect of texture on deformation behavior of alumi-
num sheets. J. Jpn Inst. Light Metals 31, 307–312.
Kim, J.-K., Yu, T.-X., 1997. Forming and failure behaviour of coated, laminated and sandwiched sheet
metals: a review. Journal of Materials Processing Technology 63, 33–42.
Majlessi, S.A., Dadras, P., 1983. Pure plastic bending of sheet laminates under plane strain condition. Int.
J. Mech. Sci. 25, 1–14.
Prager, W., 1956. A new method of analyzing stresses and strains in work-hardening plastic solids. J. Appl.
Mech. 23, 493–496.
Semiatin, N.L., Piehler, H.R., 1979a. Deformation of sandwich sheet materials in uniaxial tension. Metal.
Trans. 10A, 85–96.
Semiatin, N.L., Piehler, H.R., 1979b. Formability of sandwich sheet materials in plane strain compression
and rolling. Metal. Trans. 10A, 97–107.
Semiatin, N.L., Piehler, H.R., 1979c. Forming limits of sandwich sheet materials. Metal. Trans. 10A,
1107–1118.
Shiratori, E., Ikegami, K., Yoshida, F., 1976a. The subsequent yield surfaces after proportional preload-
ing of the Tresca-type material. Bulletin of the JSME 19, 1122–1128.
Shiratori, E., Ikegami, K., Yoshida, F., Kaneko, K., Koike, S., 1976b. The subsequent yield surfaces after
preloading under combined axial load and torsion. Bulletin of the JSME 19-134, 877–883.
Toropov, V.V., Filatov, A.A., Polynkin, A.A., 1993. Multiparameter stractural optimization using FE
and multipoint explicit approximates. Structral Optimization 6, 7–14.
Toropov, V.V., Yoshida, F., van der Giessen, E., 1997. Material parameter identification for large plas-
ticity models. In: Sol, H., Oomens, C.W.J. (Eds.), Proceedings of the EUROMECH Colloqium on
Material Identification Using Mixed Numerical Experimental Methods. Kluwer Academic, pp. 81–92.
Verguts, H., Sowerby, R., 1975. The pure plastic bending of laminated sheet metals. Int. J. Mech. Sci. 17,
31–51.
Wagoner, R.H., Geng, L., Balakrishnan, V., 2000. Role of hardening law in springback. In: Khan, A.S.,
Zhan, H., Yuen Y. (Eds.), Proc. 8th Int. Symp. on Plasticity and Its Current Applications. NEAT
Press, pp. 609–611.
Yoshida, F., Hino, R., Okada, T., 1995. Deformation and fracture of stainless-steel/aluminium sheet
2170 F. Yoshida et al. / International Journal of Plasticity 19 (2003) 2149–2170

metal laminates in stretch bending/unbending. In: Tanimura, S., Khan, A.S. (Eds.), Proceedings of the
5th International Symposium on Plasticity and Its Current Applications. Gordon and Breach, PP. 869–
872.
Yoshida, F., 1995. Ratchetting behaviour of 304 stainless steel at 650 C under multiaxially strain-con-
trolled and uniaxially/multiaxially stress-controlled conditions. European J. Mechanics, A/Solids 14,
97–117.
Yoshida, F., 1997.Deformation and fracture of sheet metal laminates in plastic forming. In: Hui,D. (Ed.),
Proceedings of 4th International Conference on Composite Engineering, pp. 61–64.
Yoshida, F., Hino, R., 1997. Forming limit of stainless steel-clad aluminium sheets under plane stress
condition. Journal of Materials Processing Technology 63, 66–71.
Yoshida, F., Urabe, M., Toropov, V.V., 1998. Identification of material parameters in constitutive model
for sheet metals from cyclic bending tests. Int. J. Mech. Sci. 40, 237–249.
Yoshida, F., Urabe, M., 1999. Computer-aided process design for the tension levelling of metallic strips.
Journal of Materials Processing Technology 89/90, 218–223.
Yoshida, F., Urabe, M., 2000. Computer-aided process design for the tension levelling of clad sheet metal.
Key Engineering Materials 177-180, 503–508.
Yoshida, F., 2000. A constitutive model of cyclic plasticity. Int. J. Plasticity 16, 359–380.
Yoshida, F., Uemori, T., Fujiwara, K., 2002. Elastic-plastic behavior of steel sheets under in-plane cyclic
tension-compression at large strain. Int. J. Plasticity 18, 633–659.
Yoshida, F., Uemori, T., 2002. A model of large-strain cyclic plasticity describing the Bauschinger effect
and workhardening stagnation. Int. J. Plasticity 18, 661–686.
Zhao, K.M., Lee, J.K., 2001. Generation of cyclic stress-strain curves for sheet metals. ASME, J. Eng.
Mater. Technol. 123, 391–397.