Asymptotic analysis of growing crack stress/deformation fields in porous ductile metals and implications for stable crack growth

Abstract

Asymptotic stress and deformation fields near a quasi-statically growing plane strain tensile crack tip in porous elastic-ideally plastic material, characterized by the Gurson-Tvergaard yield condition and associated flow rule, are derived for small uniform porosity levels throughout the range 0 to 4.54 percent. The solution configuration resembles that for crack growth in fully dense, elastically compressible, elastic-ideally plastic Huber-Mises material for this porosity range, except that the angular extents and border locations of near-tip solution sectors vary with porosity level, as do the stress and deformation fields within sectors. Increasing porosity is found to result in a dramatic reduction in maximum hydrostatic stress level, greater than that for a stationary crack; it also causes a significant angular redistribution of stresses, particularly for a range of angles ahead of the crack and adjacent to the crack flank. The near-tip deformation fields derived are employed to generalize a previously-developed, successful ductile crack growth criterion. Our model predicts that for materials having the same initial slopes of their crack growth resistance curves, but different levels of uniform porosity, higher porosity results in a substantially greater propensity for stable crack growth.