A constitutive model for fiber-reinforced extrudable fresh cementitious paste

In this paper, time-continuous constitutive equations for strain rate-dependent materials are presented first, among which those for the overstress and the consistency viscoplastic models are considered. By allowing the stress states to be outside the yield surface, the overstress viscoplastic model directly defines the flow rule for viscoplastic strain rate. In comparison, a rate-dependent yield surface is defined in the consistency viscoplastic model, so that the standard Kuhn-Tucker loading/unloading condition still remains true for rate-dependent plasticity. Based on the formulation of the consistency viscoplasticity, a computational elasto-viscoplastic constitutive model is proposed for the short fiber-reinforced fresh cementitious paste for extrusion purpose. The proposed constitutive model adopts the von-Mises yield criterion, the associated flow rule and nonlinear strain rate-hardening law. It is found that the predicted flow stresses of the extrudable fresh cementitious paste agree well with experimental results. The rate-form constitutive equations are then integrated into an incremental formulation, which is implemented into a numerical framework based on ANSYS/LS-DYNA finite element code. Then, a series of upsetting and ram extrusion processes are simulated. It is found that the predicted forming load-time data are in good agreement with experimental results, suggesting that the proposed constitutive model could describe the elasto-viscoplastic behavior of the short fiber-reinforced extrudable fresh cementitious paste.