Constitutive modelling with a novel two-step optimization for an Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy and its application in FEA

The modified Johnson-Cook constitutive model was developed for describing the flow behavior of Al-7.8Zn-1.65Mg-2.0Cu (wt%) alloy based on the flow curves in the temperature range of 300 degrees C similar to 450 degrees C and strain rate range of 0.01 s(-1) similar to 10 s(-1) which were obtained by isothermal compression tests conducted on a Gleeble-3500 isothermal simulator. A two-step optimization method was proposed to optimize the prediction precision according to the evaluation of average absolute relative error (AARE). By using a traversal procedure for calculating the model under different reference conditions, this evaluator was found varying in the range of 4.1837% similar to 11.105%, revealing the great influence of reference condition on the precision, then the reference condition optimization (RCO) was conducted. Genetic algorithm (GA) was introduced as the second step of the two-step optimization (TSO) to optimize the material constants of the model, which furtherly improved the precision by reducing the AARE-value to 3.801%. The models before and after optimization were written into subroutines for the software DEFORM and the compression tests were investigated through finite element analysis (FEA). The simulated results (forming load and temperature rise) revealed that the model after TSO has the highest agreement with the experimental.