Prediction of Ductile Fracture Surface Roughness Scaling

Experimental observations have shown that the roughness of fracture surfaces exhibit certain characteristic scaling properties. Here, calculations are carried out to explore the extent to which a ductile damage/fracture constitutive relation can be used to model fracture surface roughness scaling. Ductile crack growth in a thin strip under mode I, overall plane strain, small scale yielding conditions is analyzed. Although overall plane strain loading conditions are prescribed, full 3D analyses are carried out to permit modeling of the three dimensional material microstructure and of the resulting three dimensional stress and deformation states that develop in the fracture process region. An elastic-viscoplastic constitutive relation for a progressively cavitating plastic solid is used to model the material. Two populations of second phase particles are represented: large inclusions with low strength, which result in large voids near the crack tip at an early stage, and small second phase particles, which require large strains before cavities nucleate. The larger inclusions are represented discretely and various three dimensional distributions of the larger particles are considered. The scaling properties of the predicted thickness average fracture surfaces are calculated and the results are discussed in light of experimental observations.