Effect of hardening models on different ductile fracture criteria in sheet metal forming

Prediction of the fracture is one of the challenging issues which gains attention in sheet metal forming as numerical analyses are being extensively used to simulate the process. To have better results in predicting the sheet metal fracture, appropriate ductile fracture criterion (DFC), yield criterion and hardening rule should be chosen. In this study, the effects of different hardening models namely isotropic, kinematic and combined hardening rules on the various uncoupled ductile fracture criteria are investigated using experimental and numerical methods. Five different ductile fracture criteria are implemented to a finite element code by the user subroutines. The criterion constants of DFCs are obtained by the related experimental tests. The in-plane principle strains obtained by the finite element analyses for different DFCs are compared with the experimental results. Also, the experimental results are used to evaluate the principle strain values calculated by the finite element analysis for different combinations of DFCs and hardening rules. It is shown that some DFCs give better predictions if the appropriate hardening model is employed.