Ductility of materials with ferritic matrix

A simple model for the determination of the equivalent plastic strain for void growth and coalescence is proposed. It is based on the Rice and Tracey approach and on the concept of ‘intrinsic matrix ductility’, and considers the increase during plastic deformation of the void fraction and of the local plastic strain jointly. The model is tuned using data for pure iron with pre-existing voids, and is applied to different metals with ferritic matrix, showing that it is able to account for the influence on ductility of selected microstructural parameters and of the remote state of stress.