Modeling of ductile fracture from shear to balanced biaxial tension for sheet metals

A ductile fracture model is proposed to describe shear fracture of sheet metals from shear to balanced biaxial tension via uniaxial and plane strain tension. The fracture criterion models plastic damage as strain-induced void nucleation, triaxiality-governed void enlargement, Lode-controlled void torsion, and shear-restrained coalescence of voids. Its flexibility is investigated by a parameter study of the ductile fracture model proposed. The fracture model is employed to describe ductile fracture behavior of an aluminum alloy AA6082 T6 (thickness: 1.0 mm). Dogbone specimens are strained to characterize the strain hardening properties, while another four different specimens are tested to characterize fracture behavior in shear, uniaxial tension, plane strain tension and balanced biaxial tension. The loading processes are analyzed numerically with the stress invariant-based Drucker yield function which is for the first time specified for body-centered cubic and face-centered cubic metals. Fracture strains in various loading conditions are measured with a hybrid experimental-numerical approach. The measured fracture strains are then used to calibrate the ductile fracture model proposed. The ductile fracture model calibrated above is employed to predict the onset of ductile fracture for these four specimens. For the purpose of comparison, the predicted fracture strokes of these four loading conditions are compared with those predicted by the modified Mohr–Coulomb model (Bai and Wierzbicki, 2008), and two micromechanism-inspired criteria proposed recently (Lou et al., 2012, 2014). The comparison reveals that the proposed model predicts the fracture behavior in much better agreement compared with experimental results from shear to the balanced biaxial tension. Accordingly, the proposed ductile fracture criterion is recommended for the prediction of ductile fracture in sheet metal forming processes, optimization of forming parameters and design of tools for both solid elements and shell elements. Besides, the ductile fracture model proposed can also be applied in various bulk metal forming processes in case that the model is calibrated by proper sets of experiments.