A continuum damage-based computational methodology for crack growth simulation of metal films

To simulate the crack growth and study the catastrophic fracture mechanisms of metal films, a computational methodology is developed to simulate the failure process from damage initiation to crack growth and eventually to rupture. In the computational methodology, a procedure is developed based on beam lattice model for considering the coupling interactions among damage and crack evolution. To verify the effectiveness of the developed computational methodology, fracture process of two copper film specimens were simulated and compared with the corresponding experimental results. The results show that the developed methodology is effective, and can be used to simulate the catastrophic fracture process of metal films. From the simulation results, we can find out that the fracture of metal films with initial flaws belongs to brittle fracture, and the regular lattice model can affect the crack path prediction, and random and irregular lattice model is more suitable to simulate crack growth in the developed computational methodology.