Crack Tip Profiles Generated by Anisotropic Damage

Abstract

A variety of crack tip profiles could appear under the fracture processes controlled by anisotropic damage laws. The modelling on damage generated crack tip pro files plays a significant role in the design of fracture resistant materials. An anisotropic damage evolution law is proposed herein which takes into account the deterioration effects on polymers by plastic flow, stress triaxiality and mitial draw direction. When combined with a hyperelastic and viscoplastic constitutive framework at finite deformation, the pres ent damage theory enables us to simulate numerically the crack tip profiles for both plane strain small scale yield (SSY) and single edge cracked panel (SECP) geometries. Five typ ical crack tip profiles are generated by different settings of anisotropic damage parameters. They are featured by: crack tip superblunting, branching or spearhead profile, trident shape damage channeling, sharp notch and blunted notch with possible material detach ment.