Failure of a porous solid from a deep notch

A Ph.D. study. Two porous material models have been implemented in a finite element programme and failure from a deep notch in sintered metal components has been studied numerically. Plastic zones at the notch tip, stress localization and mesh dependence under tensile loading are studied with the Gurson model (1977) for low porosity materials and the FKM model developed by Fleck, Kuhn and McMeeking (1992) for highly porous solids. This kind of analysis is useful for prediction of the notched strength of porous metals.