Constitutive Model for Cyclic Response of Structural Steels with Yield Plateau

A rate-independent cyclic plasticity model for structural steels with a yield plateau is proposed. The model couples nonlinear kinematic hardening with a memory surface in the plastic strain space, to account for the progressive cyclic hardening/softening effects and a pseudomemory surface in the deviatoric stress space to correctly describe the plateau response. A simple identification procedure to calibrate the material dependent parameters is outlined and the accuracy of the proposed model is verified against experimental data available in the literature for proportional and nonproportional loading paths.