Advances in post-necking flow curve identification of sheet metal through standard tensile testing

The standard tensile test is still the most common material test to identify the hardening behavior of sheet metal. When using standard equipment and well-known analytical formulas, however, the hardening behavior can only be identified up to the point of maximum uniform elongation. Several methods which deal with the problem of extended flow curve identification of sheet metal through a tensile test have been proposed in the past. This paper gives an overview of the four classes of methods to identify post-necking hardening behavior of sheet metal through tensile testing. In addition, identification methods from the first (average values across the neck), second (Bridgeman correction, modified Siebel and Schwaigerer correction) and third class (special case of the VFM) are used to identify the post-necking hardening behavior of DC05. Finally, these results are used to assess the validity of the different methods.