In this paper, a novel inverse computation approach is proposed to extract the anisotropic plasticity parameters of metal materials by using inverse analysis and dual indentation tests. Based on dimensional analysis and extensive finite element (FE) simulations, four independent dimensionless functions are derived to correlate the anisotropic plasticity parameters with material responses in dual indentation tests. Besides, an inverse calculation algorithm is suggested, to estimate the unknown anisotropic parameters of the indented specimens using the information collected from indentation. The proposed numerical approach is applied on a series of engineering materials. Results show that the inverse analysis is ill-posed when only the load-displacement (P-h) curves in dual indentation tests were used. This problem can be effectively alleviated by introducing the pile-up effect as the additional information. The new method is proved to be very effective and reliable.
Keywords: anisotropic plasticity; dimensional analysis; finite element analysis; indentation; inverse analysis; parameters identification.