Phase field fracture model for additively manufactured metallic materials

Phase field models have been extensively studied in the analysis of ductile fracture. However, few have been explored to simulate additively manufactured materials and validated by experimental data to date. This study aims to develop a phase field framework for modelling complex mechanical behaviours of laser powder bed fusion printed metallic materials. To consider the laser powder bed fusion induced microstructural orientation, transversely isotropic Hill48 and modified Mohr-Coulomb constitutive models are incorporated here to depict the plastic and fracture behaviours, respectively. Five types of material specimens representing a wide spectrum of stress states are designed to identify the material parameters of plasticity and fracture. Three groups of crack propagation specimens are also tested to demonstrate the capacity of the developed model. The numerical results divulge that, by considering the stress state-dependent crack initiation, the proposed phase field model is able to better reproduce force-displacement responses of all specimens. Remarkably, the complex cracking sequences, including crack initiation, propagation and final rupture, can be properly captured by the proposed phase field model. More importantly, it is necessary to apply a transversely isotropic fracture model to characterise the orientation-dependent fracture behaviour; otherwise, the crack path would be predicted incorrectly, resulting in unacceptable global force-displacement responses. This study offers an effective phase field modelling frame-work for the sophisticated constitutive characterisation of laser powder bed fusion fabricated metallic materials.

Automated summary

This study aims to develop a phase field framework for simulating the complex mechanical behaviors of laser powder bed fusion printed metallic materials. By considering the microstructural orientation induced by laser powder bed fusion, transversely isotropic Hill48 and modified Mohr-Coulomb constitutive models are incorporated to describe plasticity and fracture behaviors respectively. The proposed phase field model is able to better reproduce force-displacement responses of all specimens by considering the stress state-dependent crack initiation. Moreover, applying a transversely isotropic fracture model is necessary to accurately predict the crack path and global force-displacement responses.