Discrete crack modelling of ductile fracture driven by nonlocal softening plasticity

A combined approach towards ductile damage and fracture is presented, in the sense that a continuous material degradation is coupled with a discrete crack description for large deformations. Material degradation is modelled by a gradient enhanced damage-hyperelastoplasticity model. It is assumed that failure occurs solely due to plastic straining, which is particularly relevant for shear dominated problems, where the effect of the hydrostatic stress in triggering failure is less important. The gradient enhancement eliminates pathological localization effects which would normally result from the damage influence. Discrete cracks appear in the final stage of local material failure, when the damage has become critical. The rate and the direction of crack propagation depend on the evolution of the damage field variable, which in turn depends on the type of loading. In a large strain finite element framework, remeshing allows to incorporate the changing crack geometry and prevents severe element distortion. Attention is focused on the robustness of the computations, where the transfer of variables, which is needed after each remeshing, plays a crucial role. Numerical examples are shown and comparisons are made with published experimental results. Copyright 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEY WORDS: ductile damage; ductile fracture; non-local damage; fracture mechanics; finite element method; remeshing 1