On the coupling of anisotropic damage and plasticity models for ductile materials

In this contribution various aspects of an anisotropic damage model coupled to plasticity are considered. The model is formulated within the thermodynamic framework and implements a strong coupling between plasticity and damage. The constitutive equations for the damaged material are written according to the principle of strain energy equivalence between the virgin material and the damaged material. The damaged material is modeled using the constitutive laws of the effective undamaged material in which the nominal stresses are replaced by the effective stresses. The model considers different interaction mechanisms between damage and plasticity defects in such a way that two-isotropic and two-kinematic hardening evolution equations are derived, one of each for the plasticity and the other for the damage. An additive decomposition of the total strain into elastic and inelastic parts is adopted in this work. The elastic part is further decomposed into two portions, one is due to the elastic distortion of the material grains and the other is due to the crack closure and void contraction. The inelastic part is also decomposed into two portions, one is due to nucleation and propagation of dislocations and the other is due to the lack of crack closure and void contraction. Uniaxial tension tests with unloadings have been used to investigate the damage growth in high strength steel. A good agreement between the experimental results and the model is obtained. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.