Ductile fracture micro-mechanisms of high strength low alloy steels

There has been a considerable amount of research investigating the strain induced void accumulation under uniaxial deformation which is, in principle, affected by both the applied stress (i.e., hydrostatic stress) and the resulting plastic strain. It has been not clear in these circumstances whether this damage accumulation is stress assisted or strain induced. In order to investigate this issue, tensile experiments were carried out at various notch geometries to correlate the void area fraction with the equivalent plastic strain and the stress triaxility ratio of high strength low alloy (HSLA-100) steel at ambient temperature. A Bayesian neural network model is also created to correlate the complex relationship between the void area fraction with its influencing parameters in a variety of high strength low alloy steels under tension published in the literature. The model has been validated through the present experimental data and the other data published in the literature. The effect of all individual variables on damage accumulations has also been investigated. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved