Plastic fracture simulation by using discretized virtual internal bond

The plastic deformation is always localized prior to fracture for ductile materials. To unify the plasticity and fracture together on the micro bond level, a plasticity-fracture-embedded bond potential is proposed for the lattice model. The discretized virtual internal bond (DVIB) is a newly-developed lattice model, which consists of lattice bond cells. With this proposed bond potential, the DVIB can capture the irreversibility feature of the plastic deformation and simulate the plastic fracture propagation of materials with fracture energy conservation. The simulation results are almost independent of mesh size. The unified bond potential stabilizes the lattice model and makes the simulation results more reliable in plastic fracture simulation. It provides a more straightforward, simple and efficient method for plastic fracture simulation. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.