On the use of Considere's criterion in tensile testing of materials which accumulate internal damage

An attempt is made to examine how Considere's criterion can be adapted for materials that build up internal damage during deformation. It is shown that for materials that accumulate significant internal damage, Considere's criterion takes a special form when written in terms of true stress and true longitudinal strain. Nonetheless, the criterion need to be modified to detect whether fracture of a ductile tensile bar of such materials is initiated by the necking instability.