Prediction of Flat-To-Slant Fracture Transition in Ductile Failure Mechanism

Ductile fracture propagation in metallic engineering components is critical for structural integrity procedures and safety operations. Its complexity entails the synergy of various components controlling the damage process at the local level where impurities, in the form of hard particles such as carbides and inclusions, become initiation sites for macrocracks formation due to stresses. Slant fracture mechanism is usually associated with low-stress state levels having a prominent influence of shear-dominated mechanism driving the failure process. In this regard, void-initiating sites would coalesce within a very well-defined localized shear band rather than intervoid necking. A phenomenological approach is proposed in this work to avert the complexity of the aforementioned mechanisms by posing damage initiation and propagation as a sequence of two surfaces that define the limit of ductility regarding stress state and strain softening.