Tension–torsion fracture experiments—Part I: Experiments and a procedure to evaluate the equivalent plastic strain

Ductile failure experiments on a double notched tube (DNT) specimen subjected to a combination of tensile load and torque that was applied at a fixed ratio is presented. The experimental results extend those in Barsoum and Faleskog (2007a) down to zero stress triaxiality. A new and robust evaluation procedure for such tests is proposed, and a simple relation for the equivalent plastic strain at failure for combined normal and shear deformation, respectively, is developed. Tests were carried out on the medium strength medium hardening steel Weldox 420, and the high strength low hardening steel Weldox 960. The experimental results unanimously show that ductile failure not only depends on stress triaxiality, but is also strongly affected by the type of deviatoric stress state that prevails, which can be quantified by a stress invariant that discriminates between axisymmetric stressing and shear dominated stressing, e.g., the Lode parameter. Additional experiments on round notch bar (RNB) specimens are recapitulated in order to give a comprehensive account on how ductile failure depends on stress triaxiality, ranging from zero to more than 1.6, and the type of stress state for the two materials tested. This provides an extensive experimental data base that will be used to explore an extension of the Gurson model that incorporates damage development in shear presented in Xue et al. (2013) (Part II).