A finite element study of the near crack tip deformation of a ductile material under mixed mode loading

Abstract In ductile fracture, voids near a crack tip play an important role. From this point of view, a large deformation finite element analysis has been made to study the deformation, stress and strain, and void ratio near the crack tip under mixed mode plane strain loading conditions, employing Gurson's constitutive equation which has taken into account the effects of void nucleation and growth. The results show that: (i) one corner of the crack tip sharpens while the other corner blunts, (ii) the stress and strain distributions except for the near crack tip region, can be superimposed by normalizing distance from the crack tip by a crack tip deformation length, i.e., a steady-state solution under a mixed mode condition has been obtained, (iii) the field near a crack tip can be divided into four characteristic fields ( K field, HRR field, blunted crack tip field, and damaged region), and (iv) the strain and void volume fraction become concentrated in the sharpened part of a crack tip with increasing Mode II component.