Benchmark Analysis of Ductile Fracture Simulation for Circumferentially Cracked Pipes Subjected to Bending

To predict fracture behavior for ductile materials, some ductile fracture simulation methods different from classical approaches have been investigated based on appropriate models of ductile fracture. For the future use of the methods to overcome restrictions of classical approaches, the applicability to the actual components is of concern. In this study, two benchmark problems on the fracture tests supposing actual components were provided to investigate the prediction ability of simulation methods containing parameter decisions. One was the circumferentially through-wall and surface cracked pipes subjected to monotonic bending, and the other was the circumferentially through-wall cracked pipes subjected to cyclic bending. Participants predicted the ductile crack propagation behavior by their own approaches, including finite element method (FEM) employed Gurson–Tvergaard–Needleman (GTN) yielding function with void ratio criterion, are FEM employed GTN yielding function, FEM with fracture strain or energy criterion modified by stress triaxiality, extended FEM with J or ΔJ criterion, FEM with stress triaxiality and plastic strain based ductile crack propagation using FEM, and elastic-plastic peridynamics. Both the deformation and the crack propagation behaviors for monotonic bending were well reproduced, while few participants reproduced those for cyclic bending. To reproduce pipe deformation and fracture behaviors, most of the groups needed parameters that were determined to reproduce pipe deformation and fracture behaviors in benchmark problems themselves and it is still difficult to reproduce them by using parameters only from basic materials tests.