Large Strain Shear Compression Test of Sheet Metal Specimens A. Borhana & H.O. Ali & M.N. Tamin Received: 3 November 2012 / Accepted: 13 May 2013 / Published online: 24 May 2013 # Society for Experimental Mechanics 2013 Abstract A hybrid experimental-computational procedure to establish accurate true stress-plastic strain curve of sheet metal specimen covering the large plastic strain region using shear compression test data is described. A new shear com- pression jig assembly with a machined gage slot inclined at 35° to the horizontal plane of the assembly is designed and fabricated. The novel design of the shear compression jig assembly fulfills the requirement to maintain a uniform volume of yielded material with characteristic maximum plastic strain level across the gage region of the Shear Compression Metal Sheet (SCMS) specimen. The approach relies on a one-to-one correlation between measured global load–displacement response of the shear compression jig assembly with SCMS specimen to the local stress-plastic strain behavior of the material. Such correlations have been demonstrated using finite element (FE) simulation of the shear compression test. Coefficients of the proposed corre- lations and their dependency on relative plastic modulus were determined. The procedure has been established for materials with relative plastic modulus in the range 5×10 -4 < (E p /E) <0.01. It can be readily extended to materials with relative plastic modulus values beyond the range considered in this study. Nonlinear characteristic hardening of the ma- terial could be established through piecewise linear consid- eration of the measured load–displacement curve. Validity of the procedure is established by close comparison of measured and FE-predicted load–displacement curve when the provisional hardening curve is employed as input mate- rial data in the simulation. The procedure has successfully been demonstrated in establishing the true stress-plastic strain curve of a demonstrator 0.0627C steel SCMS speci- men to a plastic strain level of 49.2 pct. Keywords Finite element (FE) method . True stress-plastic strain curve . Shear compression test . Shear compression metal sheet (SCMS) specimen . Relative plastic modulus Introduction Numerous automotive components such as front quarter panels, front longitudinal, floor panels and shock towers are fabricated from sheet metals. These components carry the design load during normal operation of the vehicle. However, in the event of a crash, the components should effectively absorb the associated impact energy through the large plastic deformation. The various deformation and fail- ure modes of the sheet metal components include excessive straining resulting in through-thickness necking, localized buckling as initiated by eccentric compressive loading and terminal fracture. Both tensile and compressive nature of the deformation is expected. Prediction of large deformation response and failure process of these sheet metal compo- nents is indispensable in design and optimization of the structure with respect to metal forming operation and crash loading. In this respect, both tensile and compressive be- havior of the sheet material covering the complete strain ranges to fracture is required for the simulation. Numerous published stress-plastic strain behaviors of metals are gen- erated from bulk specimen geometry. Process-induced mi- crostructure modification leading to anisotropic effect and kinematic constraints of sheet metal specimen rendered different stress–strain response of the material. In addition, A. Borhana : H.O. Ali : M.N. Tamin (*) Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Skudai, Johor, Malaysia e-mail: taminmn@fkm.utm.my A. Borhana Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Sebha University, Sabha, Libya Experimental Mechanics (2013) 53:1449–1460 DOI 10.1007/s11340-013-9763-0