Ductile Damage Evolution Under Different Strain Rate Conditions
Abstract Failure of ductile metals is always controlled at microstructural level by the formation and growth of microcavities that nucleate from inclusions embedded in the ductile matrix, also at high deformation rate. Many damage models have been proposed to describe both evolutions of these cavities under the action of increasing plastic deformation, and the associated effects on the material behavior. Basically, two classes of damage models are currently available: the Gurson’s type model and continuum damage mechanics (CDM). In the framework of CDM, Bonora (1997) proposed a non-linear damage model for ductile failure that overcome the main limitations presented by others formulations: the model is material independent and its validity under multiaxial state of stress conditions has been verified for a number of class of metals, (Bonora, 1998, Bonora and Newaz, 1997). In addition, this model has the main feature to require a limited number of physically based parameters that can be easily identified with ad hoc tensile tests. In this paper, for the first time, the effect of the strain rate on ductile damage evolution has been studied in a quantitative manner evaluating the material loss of stiffness under dynamic loading. Damage measurements on SA537 Cl 1 steel have been performed according to the multiple strain gauge technique on hourglass shaped rectangular tensile specimen. Dynamic effect was introduced performing the test at different imposed displacement rates. An extensive scanning electron microscopy analysis has been performed in order to correlate damage effects with the microstructure morphological modification as a function of the applied deformation rate.