The Behavior of Ductile Damage Model on Steel Structure Failure

Abstract

Damage of materials means the progressive or sudden deterioration of their mechanical strength due to loading, thermal or chemical effects. It could cover all related phenomena that occur from the virgin or reference state up to a mesocrack initiation. The continuum mechanical simulation of micro structural damage process is important in the study of ductile fracture mechanics. Material degradation has been widely modelled by continuum damage mechanics and it is accepted as a reliable methodology. In this paper, finite element simulation of damage evolution and fracture initiation in ductile solids will be investigated. Simulations are performed and the results are compared with the numerical and experimental ones addressed in the literature and good agreements were found between them. For this model, damage propagation and crack initiation, and ductile fracture behavior of notched specimens are predicted. The model can also quickly capture both deformation and damage behavior of the part by using 3D stress algorithm. Experiments are also carried out to validate the results. It is concluded that finite element analysis (FEA) in conjunction with continuum damage mechanics (CDM) can be used as a reliable tool to predict ductile damage. By means of examples, it has been demonstrated that the effect of softening cause by damage influences the global behavior of the structures and that the damage variable itself may give useful insights on failure analysis.