Modeling of Ductile Damage and Complexity Across Scales

Comprehensive hierarchical modeling of ductile fracture processes will require a knowledge of microstructure, mesoscale and macro-scale material response. This discussion focuses on the development of experimental and computational methods suitable for use in hierarchical modeling schemes. The purpose is to explore how discrete, cellular representations of complex geometric phenomena in material damage and fracture can complement the real, continuous representations common in methods such as finite element analysis. Results in three studies are discussed: (i) random hole array experiments studied using finite element methods to simulate microvoid interactions, (ii) the kinematics of mesoscale representative volume element material damage using a cellular model on a massively parallel computer and (iii) video imaging, analysis and simulation of macroscopic fracture surfaces with mesoscale pixel resolution.