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Published April 2014 | public
Journal Article

Optimal Scaling in Solids Undergoing Ductile Fracture by Void Sheet Formation

Abstract

This work is concerned with the derivation of optimal scaling laws, in the sense of matching lower and upper bounds on the energy, for a solid undergoing ductile fracture. The specific problem considered concerns a material sample in the form of an infinite slab of finite thickness subjected to prescribed opening displacements on its two surfaces. The solid is assumed to obey deformation-theory of plasticity and, in order to further simplify the analysis, we assume isotropic rigid-plastic deformations with zero plastic spin. When hardening exponents are given values consistent with observation, the energy is found to exhibit sublinear growth. We regularize the energy through the addition of nonlocal energy terms of the strain-gradient plasticity type. This nonlocal regularization has the effect of introducing an intrinsic length scale into the energy. Under these assumptions, ductile fracture emerges as the net result of two competing effects: whereas the sublinear growth of the local energy promotes localization of deformation to failure planes, the nonlocal regularization stabilizes this process, thus resulting in an orderly progression towards failure and a well-defined specific fracture energy. The optimal scaling laws derived here show that ductile fracture results from localization of deformations to void sheets, and that it requires a well-defined energy per unit fracture area. In particular, fractal modes of fracture are ruled out under the assumptions of the analysis. The optimal scaling laws additionally show that ductile fracture is cohesive in nature, that is, it obeys a well-defined relation between tractions and opening displacements. Finally, the scaling laws supply a link between micromechanical properties and macroscopic fracture properties. In particular, they reveal the relative roles that surface energy and microplasticity play as contributors to the specific fracture energy of the material.

Additional Information

© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. Received March 10, 2013. Accepted September 27, 2013. Published online November 5, 2013. Landry Fokoua and Michael Ortiz gratefully acknowledge the support of the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration under Award Number DE-FC52-08NA28613 through Caltech's ASC/PSAAP Center for the Predictive Modeling and Simulation of High Energy Density Dynamic Response of Materials. Landry Fokoua and Michael Ortiz also gratefully acknowledge the support of the U.S. National Science Foundation through the Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) on Science at the Triple Point Between Mathematics, Mechanics and Materials Science, Award Number 0967140. Landry Fokoua gratefully acknowledges support provided by the Hausdorff Trimester Program "Mathematical challenges of materials science and condensed matter physics: From quantum mechanics through statistical mechanics to nonlinear PDEs", Hausdorff Research Institute for Mathematics (HIM), University of Bonn, Germany.

Additional details

Created:
August 20, 2023
Modified:
October 26, 2023