Preliminary study on ductile fracture of imperfect lattice materials

The ductile fracture behavior of two-dimensional imperfect lattice material under dynamic stretching is studied by finite element method using ABAQUS/Explicit code. The simulations are performed with three isotopic lattice materials: the regular hexagonal honeycomb, the Kagome lattice and the regular triangular lattice. All the three lattices are made of an elastic/visco-plastic metal material. Two typical imperfections: vacancy defect and rigid inclusion are introduced separately. The numerical results reveal novel deformation modes and crack growth patterns in the ductile fracture of lattice material. Various crack growth patterns as defined according to their profiles, “X”-type, “Butterfly”-type, “Petal”-type, are observed in different combinations of imperfection type and lattice topology. Crack propagation could induce severe material softening and deduce the plastic dissipation of the lattices. Subsequently, the effects of the strain rate, relative density, microstructure topology, and defect type on the crack growth pattern, the associated macroscopic material softening and the knock-down of total plastic dissipation are investigated.