Plastic shearing of materials exhibiting strain hardening or strain softening

We consider the plastic shearing of a strain-rate dependent material exhibiting strain hardening or strain softening, subjected to steady shearing. We establish the existence of classical solutions and study the stability of uniform shearing. For materials exhibiting strain hardening or a moderate degree of strain softening we show that, as t → ∞, every solution approaches, at specific rates of convergence, uniform shearing; thus shear bands do not form.