Growth and closure of voids in metals at negative stress triaxialities

Damage of metals subjected to large plastic deformations typical for forming processes is mainly governed by void nucleation, growth and coalescence. An opposite process may occur in deformation processes with negative stress triaxialities: The closure of strain-induced defects under large hydrostatic pressure. Understanding the mechanisms of damage growth and healing under plastic deformation of metals is still an urgent problem. In order to solve it a theoretical framework for anisotropic ductile damage based on a physically motivated concept for changes in the void volume and shape was recently developed [6]. Strain-induced damage was experimentally determined during uniaxial compression of cylindrical metallic specimens with artificial voids represented by fully-trough drilled holes. It was revealed that the governing physical mechanism of failure is a change in void shapes due to compressive stresses at low negative stress triaxialities in contrast to the growth of voids volume due to high positive stress triaxialities in the processes with dominating tensile stresses. The tensorial model presented in [6] proved to be able to describe kinetics of ductile damage, failure as the ultimate damage, and the closure of voids at negative stress triaxialities.