J-integral and crack driving force in elastic–plastic materials

This paper discusses the crack driving force in elastic–plastic materials, with particular emphasis on incremental plasticity. Using the configurational forces approach we identify a “plasticity influence term” that describes crack tip shielding or anti-shielding due to plastic deformation in the body. Standard constitutive models for finite strain as well as small strain incremental plasticity are used to obtain explicit expressions for the plasticity influence term in a two-dimensional setting. The total dissipation in the body is related to the near-tip and far-field J-integrals and the plasticity influence term. In the special case of deformation plasticity the plasticity influence term vanishes identically whereas for rigid plasticity and elastic-ideal plasticity the crack driving force vanishes. For steady state crack growth in incremental elastic–plastic materials, the plasticity influence term is equal to the negative of the plastic work per unit crack extension and the total dissipation in the body due to crack propagation and plastic deformation is determined by the far-field J-integral. For non-steady state crack growth, the plasticity influence term can be evaluated by post-processing after a conventional finite element stress analysis. Theory and computations are applied to a stationary crack in a C(T)-specimen to examine the effects of contained, uncontained and general yielding. A novel method is proposed for evaluating J-integrals under incremental plasticity conditions through the configurational body force. The incremental plasticity near-tip and far-field J-integrals are compared to conventional deformational plasticity and experimental J-integrals.