On the Effect of Strain Gradient on Adiabatic Shear Banding

Most of the work on adiabatic shear banding is based on the effect of temperature gradients on shear band nucleation and evolution. In contrast, the present work considers the coupling between temperature and strain gradients. The competition of thermal and strain gradient terms on the onset of instability and its dependence on specimen size is illustrated. It is shown that heat conduction promotes the instability initiation in the hardening part of the homogeneous stress-strain, while the strain gradient term favors the occurrence of this initiation in the softening regime. This behavior is size dependent, i.e., small specimens can support stable homogeneous deformations even in the softening regime. The spacing of adiabatic shear bands is also evaluated by considering the dominant instability mode during the primary stages of the localization process and it is found that it is an increasing function of the strain gradient coefficient.