Experimental and PDDO-based meshfree numerical study on ductile fracture behavior of steel plate

This paper presents a meshfree approach based on the coupling of peridynamic differential operator (PDDO) and continuum mechanics to predict the ductile fracture of the steel plates. The interpolation function of particles for a shell model is established by applying the PDDO in the 2D case. The weak form of the kinetic equations is derived by discretizing the motion variables. The Gurson-Tvergaard-Needleman (GTN) constitutive model is adopted to characterize the plasticity and ductile fracture behavior of material, in which the material parameters are determined by conducting uniaxial tensile tests and scanning electron microscope analysis. The ductile fracture test of the EH36 steel plate with a prefabricated crack is conducted to validate the proposed numerical approach. The results show that the established meshfree shell model is able to accurately simulate the bearing capacity, crack propagation rate, and ductile fracture characteristics of the structure.