Equivalent strain hardening exponent of anisotropic materials based on spherical indentation response

Uniaxial strain hardening exponent is not suitable for describing the strain hardening behaviors of the anisotropic materials, especially when material deforms in the multi-axial stress states. In this work, a novel method was proposed to estimate the equivalent strain hardening exponent of anisotropic materials based on an equivalent energy method. By performing extensive finite element (FE) simulations of the spherical indentation on anisotropic materials, dimensionless function was proposed to correlate the strain hardening exponent of anisotropic materials with the indentation imprint parameters. And then, a mathematic expression on the strain hardening exponent of anisotropic materials with the indentation imprint was established to estimate the equivalent strain hardening exponent of anisotropic materials by directly solving this dimensionless function. Additionally, Meyer equation was modified to determine the yield stress of anisotropic materials. The effectiveness and reliability of the new method were verified by the numerical examples and by its application on the TC1M engineering material.