Governing factors of the local tensile stress in the vicinity of a rapidly propagating crack tip in elastic-viscoplastic solids

Because the local tensile stress near the rapidly propagating crack tip is an important factor to simulate brittle crack propagation/arrest behavior in steels based on the local fracture stress criterion, this research carried out a series of the dynamic 2D finite element analyses to characterize the local tensile stresses in elastic-viscoplastic solids. Through these analyses, factors governing the local tensile stresses are clarified. The analyses revealed that the local tensile stress is determined by a combination of the crack length, applied stress, crack velocity, and temperature. The influence of crack acceleration was also investigated from the perspective of the local tensile stresses. As the result, the crack acceleration negligibly influences the local tensile stresses and thus it is not a factor governing the local tensile stress.