Micromechanism of Ductile Crack Initiation in Structural Steels Based on Void Nucleation and Growth.

Abstract

The effect of the specimen geometry and the inclusion content on the critical condition for ductile crack initiation was determined using notched round bar tensile specimens, and the critical void volume fraction and secondary void nucleation effect were investigated using the Gurson–Tvergaard constitutive model. It is shown that the secondary void nucleation from pearlite nodules plays a dominant role in ductile crack initiation, and void nucleation and void growth behavior are strongly affected by the stress triaxiality and the plastic strain. In the large plastic strain and low stress triaxiality region, a large number of secondary voids were nucleated in the early stage of deformation and void volume fraction grew to a critical value in spite of the relatively low void growth rate at low stress triaxiality. On the other hand, in the low plastic strain and high triaxial stress region, void volume can grow rapidly even though the volume of secondary nucleated void was smaller than that of high plastic strain region. Critical void volume fraction decreases largely with increasing in MnS content in the high triaxial stress region; however, the effect of MnS content is small in the low stress triaxiality and large plastic strain region.