Abstract :
[en] Numerical modelling of the complete ductile failure process is still a challenge. On the one hand, continuous approaches, described by damage models, succeed in the initial diffuse damage stage but are still unable to represent physical discontinuities. On the other hand, discontinuous approaches, such as the cohesive zone models, are able to represent the crack propagation behaviour. They are suited for local damaging processes as crack initiation and propagation, and so, fail in diffuse damage prediction of ductile materials. Moreover, they do not usually capture triaxiality effects, mandatory for accurate ductile failure simulations. To describe the ductile failure process, the numerical scheme proposed here combines both approaches [1] in order to beneficiate from their respective advantages: a non-local damage model combined with an extrinsic cohesive law in a discontinuous Galerkin finite element framework. An application example of this scheme is shown on the attached figure. The initial diffuse damage stage is modelled by an implicit nonlocal damage model as suggested by [2]. Upon damage to crack transition, a cohesive band [3] is used to introduce in-plane stretch effects inside the cohesive law or in other words, a triaxiality-dependent behaviour. Indeed, these in-plane strains play an important role during the ductile failure process and have to be considered. Concretely, when crack appears in the last failure stage, all the damaging process is assumed to occur inside a thin band ahead of the crack surface. Thanks to the small but finite numerical band thickness, the strains inside this band can be obtained from the in-plane strains and from the cohesive jump.
Then, the stress-state inside the band and the cohesive traction forces on the crack lips are deduced from the underlying continuum damage model. The band thickness is not a new material parameter but is computed to ensure the energetic consistency during the transition.
[1] Wu L, Becker G, Noels L. Elastic damage to crack transition in a coupled non-local implicit discontinuous Galerkin/extrinsic cohesive law framework. Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng. 279 (2014): 379–409
[2] Peerlings R., de Borst R., Brekelmans W., Ayyapureddi S. Gradient-enhanced damage for quasi-brittle materials, Int. J. for Num. Methods in Eng. 39 (1996): 3391-3403
[3] Remmers J. J. C., de Borst R., Verhoosel C. V., Needleman A. The cohesive band model: a cohesive surface formulation with stress triaxiality. Int. J. Fract. 181 (2013): 177–188