Discrete modelling of ductile crack growth by void growth to coalescence

Ductile crack growth is analyzed by discrete representation of the voids growing near a blunting crack-tip. Coalescence of the nearest void with the crack-tip is modeled, followed by the subsequent coalescence of other discretely represented voids with the newly formed crack-tip. Necking of the ligaments between the crack-tip and a void or between voids involves the development of very large strains, which are included in the model by using remeshing at several stages of the plastic deformation. The material is here described by standard isotropic hardening Mises theory. For a very small void volume fraction the crack-tip tends to interact with one void at a time, while larger void volume fractions lead to simultaneous interaction of multiple voids on the plane ahead of the crack-tip. In some cases a change from one of these mechanisms to the other is seen during growth through the many voids represented here. First uniformly spaced voids of equal size are considered, but also a few computations for a random distribution of the void spacings or of the void sizes are carried out.