A Study on the Effect of the Stress State on Ductile Fracture

The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that besides the stress triaxiality parameter, the Lode angle, which can be related to the third invariant of the deviatoric stress tensor, also has an important effect on ductile fracture. This is achieved by conducting a series of micromechanics analyses of void-containing unit cells and experimental-numerical studies of carefully designed specimens experiencing a wide range of stress states. As a result, a fracture criterion is expressed in terms of the equivalent failure strain as a function of the stress triaxiality and the Lode angle (or the third invariant of the stress deviator) and this function is calibrated for a DH36 steel plate.