%0 Journal Article %T Modelling a Response of Complex-Phase Steel at High Strain Rates. %A Ć krlec A %A Kocjan T %A Nagode M %A Klemenc J %J Materials (Basel) %V 17 %N 10 %D 2024 May 13 %M 38793369 %F 3.748 %R 10.3390/ma17102302 %X In this article, a response of the complex-phase high-strength steel SZBS800 was modelled by considering the strain-rate influence. The material's response was first measured with a series of standard tensile tests at lower strain rates. Higher strain rates were achieved using the unconventional test of shooting the ball into flat specimens. A viscoplastic formulation of the Cowper-Symonds material model was applied to consider the strain-rate effects. The parameters SIGY, p, and C of the material model were estimated using a step-wise procedure. First, rough estimates of the three parameters were obtained from the tensile tests using the grid search method. Then, the parameters p and C were fine-tuned using the reverse engineering approach. With the help of explicit dynamic simulations and all the experimental data, a multi-criteria cost function was defined and applied to obtain a smooth response function for the parameters p and C. Its optimum was determined by a real-valued genetic algorithm. The optimal values of the estimated parameters model the material response well, although a domain of optimum candidates spans two orders of magnitude for the parameter p and a few orders of magnitude for the parameter C.