Abstract:A constitutive law is offered for an AZ31B-H24 Mg alloy within a strain rate range of 10^-5-10^-2 s^–1 at a temperature of 400 °C. The constitutive law, which is developed by curve fitting the tensile tests data, is expressed as a flow stress function of strain and strain rate. Furthermore, the constitutive law is embedded into a proper FE model to simulate the tensile experiments for the purpose of verifying reliability, where the incremental stress-strain relationships are calculated by an elastic-plastic theory in the finite element analysis (FEA). The results show that the stress-strain characteristics and the final deformed shapes in the FEA agree well with the experiments. In addition, the predicting analysis of constant-velocity stretch conditions and the verification of a free bulge forming experiment show that the proposed FE model is practicable for mechanical analysis on superplastic forming problems. A selective numerical method is offered for advanced superplastic analysis on AZ31 Mg alloys.

Key words: AZ31 magnesium alloy; constitutive law; finite element verification