Experimental and numerical study of ductile fracture initiation in aluminum 6061-T6

This work deals with the characterization of ductile damage in Aluminum 6061-T6 alloy. In this paper we discuss the stress triaxiality effect on the initiation and the evolution of damage through a sequence of tensile tests conducted on round specimens with different rate of triaxialities and tearing tests on pre-cracked Compact Tension specimens. Scattering of ductility and toughness values was highlighted between the three characteristic directions studied in this topic. Based on the experimental results, numerical simulation has been performed in order to analyze and predict ductile fracture initiation of this aluminum alloy by simulating void growth according to the Rice-Tracey micromechanical model. The numerical simulation was conducted in two steps: first the critical void growth ratio (R/R0)c was evaluated for tensile cylindrical specimens with different degrees of triaxiality and then used to analyze crack growth initiation on Compact Tension specimen. Due to the Al-6061-T6 highly sensitivity to triaxiality, a necessary adaptation of the Rice-Tracey model's coefficient was made. (authors)