Formability prediction of advanced high strength steel with a new ductile fracture criterion

A ductile fracture criterion is newly proposed to accurately predict forming limit diagrams (FLD) of sheet metals. The new ductile fracture criterion is based on the effect of the non-dimensional stress triaxiality, the stress concentration factor and the effective plastic strain on the nucleation, growth and coalescence of voids. The new ductile fracture criterion has been applied to estimate the formability of four kind advanced high strength steels (AHSS): DP780, DP980, TRIP590, and TWIP980. FLDs predicted are compared with experimental results and those predicted by other ductile fracture criteria. The comparison demonstrates that FLDs predicted by the new ductile fracture criterion are in better agreement with experimental FLDs than those predicted by other ductile fracture criteria. The better agreement of FLDs predicted by the new ductile fracture criterion is because conventional ductile fracture criteria were proposed for fracture prediction in bulk metal forming while the new one is proposed to predict the onset of fracture in sheet metal forming processes. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.