Numerical prediction of slant fracture with continuum damage mechanics

Ductile specimens always exhibit an inclined fracture surface with an angle relative to the loading axis. This paper reports a numerical study on the cup–cone fracture mode in round bar tensile tests and the slant fracture in plane-strain specimens based on continuum damage mechanics. A combined implicit–explicit numerical scheme is first developed within ABAQUS through user defined material subroutines, in which the implicit solver: Standard, and the explicit solver: Explicit, are sequentially used to predict one single damage/fracture process. It is demonstrated that this numerical approach is able to significantly reduce computational cost for the simulation of fracture tests under quasi-static or low-rate loading. Comparison with various tensile tests on 2024-T351 aluminum alloy is made showing good correlations in terms of the load–displacement response and the fracture patterns. However, some differences exist in the prediction of the critical displacement to fracture.