Void growth and coalescence in porous plastic solids

Failure of metals I : brittle and ductile fracture

Publisher Summary An important failure mechanism in ductile metals and their alloys is by growth and coalescence of microscopic voids. In structural materials, the voids nucleate at inclusions and second-phase particles by decohesion of the particle–matrix interface or by particle cracking. Void growth is driven by plastic deformation of the surrounding matrix. Early micromechanical treatments of this phenomenon considered the growth of isolated voids. Later, constitutive equations for porous ductile solids were developed based on homogenization theory. Among these, the most widely known model was developed by Gurson for spherical and cylindrical voids.

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Ductile Fracture by Void Growth to Coalescence

Deformation and failure of metal-matrix composites, by the nucleation and growth of voids within the ductile matrix, are studied numerically and experimentally. The matrix material is modelled as an elastic-viscoplastic ductile porous solid to characterize the evolution of damage from void formation. The material systems chosen for parametric analyses and for quantitative comparisons between numerical analyses and experiments are aluminum alloys discontinuously reinforced with SiC. The brittle reinforcement phase, in the form of spheres, particulates with sharp corners, or cylindrical whiskers, is modelled as elastic or rigid, with the interfaces between the ductile matrix and the brittle reinforcement assumed to be perfectly bonded. The overall constitutive response of the composite and the evolution of matrix failure are analyzed using finite element models within the context of axisymmetric and plane strain formulations. Detailed parametric analyses of the effects of (i) reinforcement shape, (ii) reinforcement volume fraction, (iii) mechanical properties of the matrix, (iv) nucleation strain and volume fraction of void-nucleating particles, and (v) reinforcement distribution on the overall deformation and ductility of the composite are discussed. The numerical predictions of yield strength, strain hardening exponent and ductility for the composites with different volume fractions of SiC particulates are also compared with experimental measurements.

An analysis of the effects of matrix void growth on deformation and ductility in metal-ceramic composites

A ductile damage criterion at various stress triaxialities

Void growth and ductile failure in the nonuniform multiaxial stress fields of notched bars are studied numerically and experimentally. U-notched bars with different notch acuities are made from partially consolidated and sintered iron powder compacts with various residual porosities. The materials are modelled using an elastic-viscoplastic constitutive relation that accounts for strength degradation resulting from the growth of microvoids. The matrix stress-strain relation and the initial void volume fractions used in the calculations are determined experimentally. The remaining parameters in the constitutive equations are evaluated from micromechanical models. Comparisons of the calculations with experimental results indicate that the constitutive model can provide good estimates of the evolution of the void volume fraction and of the strength reduction induced by void growth under a variety of nonuniform stress histories.

O. Richmond

Papers

Void growth and failure in notched bars