The Sandia Fracture Challenge: blind round robin predictions of ductile tearing

Abstract

Existing and emerging methods in computational mechanics are rarely validated against problems with an unknown outcome. For this reason, Sandia National Laboratories, in partnership with US National Science Foundation and Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division, launched a computational challenge in mid-summer, 2012. Researchers and engineers were invited to predict crack initiation and propagation in a simple but novel geometry fabricated from a common off-the-shelf commercial engineering alloy. The goal of this international Sandia Fracture Challenge was to benchmark the capabilities for the prediction of deformation and damage evolution associated with ductile tearing in structural metals, including physics models, computational methods, and numerical implementations currently available in the computational fracture community. Thirteen teams participated, reporting blind predictions for the outcome of the Challenge. The simulations and experiments were performed independently and kept confidential. The methElectronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10704-013-9904-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA e-mail: blboyce@sandia.gov ods for fracture prediction taken by the thirteen teams ranged from very simple engineering calculations to complicated multiscale simulations. The wide variation in modeling results showed a striking lack of consistency across research groups in addressing problems of ductile fracture. While some methods were more successful than others, it is clear that the problem of ductile fracture prediction continues to be challenging. Specific areas of deficiency have been identified through this effort. Also, the effort has underscored the need for additional blind prediction-based assessments.

Experimental and numerical penetration response of laser-welded stiffened panels

“…We adopt Modified Mohr-Coulomb (MMC) plane stress fracture criterion that is well-established for prediction of fracture in small structural components [37][38][39]. The criterion is given as in Li et al …”

Data-Driven Materials Investigations: The Next Frontier in Understanding and Predicting Fatigue Behavior

“…An example of such a published materials data set is the UltraHigh Carbon Steel Micrograph DataBase (UHCSDB). 32 Second, the community should organize blind-prediction competitions to assess data-driven fatigue models, analogous to the Sandia Fracture Challenge 33,34 or the long-running organic crystal structure prediction blind tests. 35 Finally, the community should adopt data platforms such as Citrination, 36 Materials Commons, 37 and Materials Data Facility, 38 as these systems greatly facilitate data and model sharing, reproducibility of results, and reuse of code.…”

The second Sandia Fracture Challenge: predictions of ductile failure under quasi-static and moderate-rate dynamic loading

“…The results were documented in a special issue of the International Journal of Fracture (Boyce et al 2014). With no direct funding provided to the participants, thirteen teams with over 50 participants from over 20 different institutions responded to the challenge.…”

“…The first Sandia Fracture Challenge was designed based on lessons learned in earlier double-blind assessments, where it became obvious that the double-blind evaluation methodology should be governed by some common constraints (Boyce et al 2011). These common constraints also apply to the second Sandia Fracture Challenge presented here.…”