Abstract: Since magnesium alloy is a promising engineering material for the automotive light-mass design, this
paper investigates the plasticity and fracture properties of AZ31B sheets based on the experimental results from
uniaxial, biaxial and equi-biaxial tensions. The results show that AZ31B displays remarkably anisotropy in both
plasticity and fracture. Hill-1948, Barlat-1989 and Barlat-2003 anisotropic constitutive models were calibrated
for plasticity. The results show that that none of the above models accurately describes both material strength
and plastic flow at various orientations if associated flow rules are assumed. Therefore, non-associated flow is
suggested for this material. The ductile fracture strains of AZ31B-H24 can be measured using two methods, the
correlation Digital Imaging Correlation (DIC) system and the fracture-initiation-locations area-reduction, with
the forecast results calculated using the fracture forming limit diagram (FFLD) and the modified Mohr-Coulomb
criterion (MMC).

Key words: automotive light-mass design, magnesium alloy, anisotropy, non-associated flow rule, fracture
forming limit diagram (FFLD), modified-Mohr-Coulomb (MMC)