Triaxiality dependent cohesive zone model

A versatile cohesive zone model to predict ductile fracture at different states of stresses is proposed. The formulation developed for mode-I plane strain accounts for triaxiality of the stress-state explicitly by using basic elastic-plastic constitutive relations combined with two stress-state independent new model parameters. Comparison with available predictions of cohesive models based on porous plasticity damage models is used to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed model. The effect of triaxiality on conventional cohesive parameters is well predicted as peak stresses are shown to increase while the cohesive energy decreases with triaxiality. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.