Dynamic effects on cavitation instabilities in solids

Unstable growth of a cavity in a solid subjected to a suddenly applied, remote stress field was investigated for an elastic-plastic material, including the effects of both inertia and a strain-rate sensitive yield criterion. Both spherically-symmetric and axisymmetric loading was considered. It was found that for both types of loading, the critical load for cavitation in the quasi-static case would cause unstable cavity growth in the dynamic analysis case, and the long-time response was cavity expansion at a constant rate. Cavity growth in a material governed by power-law creep was also considered. Here, it was found that unlimited cavity growth occurs at any level of stress for both spherically-symmetric and axisymmetric loading.