A Fracture Model Applied to the Ductile/Brittle Regime

Abstract

Abstract. The fracture resistance of ferritic steels in the ductilelbrittle transition regime is controlled by the competition between ductile tearing and cleavage fracture. Under typical conditions, a crack initiates and grows by ductile tearing but ultimate failure occurs by catastrophic cleavage fracture. In this paper the tearing process is simulated using void-containing cell elements embedded within a conventional elasticplastic continuum. Weakest link statistics is incorporated into the cell element model and this new model is employed to predict the onset of unstable cleavage fracture. Load-displacement behavior, ductile tearing resistance and transition to cleavage fracture are investigated for three different test geometries. The model predicts trends in ductilelbrittle transition that are consistent with experimental data.

Coupled porous plasticity – Continuum damage mechanics approaches for modelling temperature driven ductile-to-brittle transition fracture in ferritic steels

“…Among various numerical modeling attempts to this problem in the literature, see, e.g., [20], [21], [22], [23], [24] and [25], the most common one is based on a the use of Gurson-type porous plasticity along with either Ritchie-Knott-Rice or Beremin model, see, e.g., [22] or [21]. However, these approaches suffer from the mentioned inherent weaknesses pertaining to brittle fracture models.…”