The objective is to identify the micromechanism(s) of ductile crack advance, and isolatethe key microstructural and material parameters that a?ect these micromechanisms andfracture toughness of ductile structural materials. Three dimensional, ?nite element, ?nitedeformation, small scale yielding calculations of mode I crack growth are carried out forductile material matrix containing two populations of void nucleating particles using anelasto-viscoplastic constitutive framework for progressively cavitating solid. The larger par-ticles or inclusions that result in void nucleation at an early stage are modeled discretelywhile smaller particles that require large strains to nucleate voids are homogeneously dis-tributed. The size, spacing and volume fraction of inclusions introduce microstructure-basedlength-scales. In the calculations, ductile crack growth is computed and fracture toughness ischaracterized. Several features of crack growth behavior and dependence of fracture tough-ness on microstructural and material parameters observed in experiments, naturally emergein our calculations. The extent to which the microstructural and material parameters a?ectthe micromechanisms of ductile crack advance and, hence, the macroscopic fracture tough-ness of the material is discussed. The results presented provide guidelines for microstructuralengineering to increase ductile fracture toughness, for example, the results show that for amaterial with small inclusions, increasing the mean inclusion spacing has a greater e?ect onfracture toughness than for a material with large inclusions.
On the micromechanism of inclusion driven ductile fracture and its implications on fracture toughness
