An Extension of the BWH Instability Criterion: Numerical Study

The BWH criterion for simulating instability prior to necking in sheet metal has been extended with a post-necking damage model, in which the effect of the local neck inside a large element is accounted for with low mesh dependency. The model is incorporated in the explicit FE code LS-DYNA. The material model can be calibrated from a single uniaxial tensile test, and gives good prediction of rupture for a range of stress triaxialities.This paper investigates the robustness of the criterion through numerical simulations of different experiments, from forming limit tests to large impact experiments on stiffened panel structures. A full-scale collision is simulated with two different mesh-sizes to investigate the robustness of the fracture prediction.The validation cases are simulated with good accuracy considering the coarse meshes involved. Based on the validation, the post-necking extension of the BWH criterion can readily be used for structural design of offshore structures in order to assess the technical safety level of the structure against collisions in all phases of the design process. The method has a good ratio of accuracy vs. computational cost, and is less prone to user-errors as the calibration is simple and the mesh-scaling is automated.Copyright © 2015 by ASME