Plasticity Near a Blunt Flaw Under Remote Tension
SourceElastic-plastic analyses of a group of blunt-tipped crack-like flaws were performed. Elliptical, semicircular, and circular tip geometries were considered. Results show very minor excursions of the plastic zone along the crack faces in contained plasticity, even after the characteristic butterfly shaped crack-tip zone has developed. As a result of this yielding behavior, it was found that stress triaxiality predictions following from slipline theory significantly overestimate the elastic-plastic results. J-integral computations show that there is significant path dependency near the tip, which can be associated with the nonproportional stress histories and partial crack face unloading that was detected. The results should be important in applications of critical stress and J-integral concepts to fracture from crack-like imperfections.