EMPIRICAL-ASSESSMENT OF DUCTILE FRACTURE INITIATION IN STEEL BARS WITH NOTCH AND 3-POINT BEND SPECIMEN WITH EDGE CRACK

Proposed is a parameter defined to characterize the onset of macrocrack initiation in notched steel bars and cracked three-point bend specimens. It accounts for stress triaxiality and damage by plasticity reflected via the effective plastic strain. Results are obtained for notched round bars made of 20#, A3, DE36I and DE36II steel by assuming that the stress triaxiality increases with increasing effective plastic strain; they are compared with the results by letting the stress triaxiality to be constant. Use are made of experimental data on the necking of tensile bars. The parameter corresponding to the onset of ductile fracture were found to be nearly constant. Since the local effective plastic stress can be related to the crack tip opening (COD) distance, the same procedure can be applied to evaluate fracture initiation in three-point bend specimens with an edge crack. It is found that the COD in AS1204-350 and AS1405-180 structural steels decreased with increasing stress triaxiality.