On critical assessment of the use of local and nonlocal damage models for prediction of ductile crack growth and crack path in various loading and boundary conditions

In this work, we have assessed the results of the local and nonlocal versions of Rousselier's damage model, which have been used here for simulation of ductile crack growth. There are several issues regarding the accuracy of the results which has been addressed in this paper, e.g., accuracy in simulation of crack path, extent and width of the damaged region, fracture resistance behaviour in situations such as symmetric vs. non-symmetric boundary-value problems, mixed-mode loading vs. mode-I loading of the crack-tip, etc. It was also observed that the shape and orientation of the elements at the crack-tip, in addition to their size, influence the results of the local damage model. In this work, it was shown that the above issues can be resolved through the use of nonlocal damage models. The predictions of the nonlocal model are also consistent with the experimental observations unlike its local counterpart. Several examples were presented, where the results as obtained by both the local and nonlocal models were compared. From this experience, it is recommended that the local damage models should not be used blindly by the analysts for all kinds of mesh design, loading, boundary conditions, etc. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.