A triaxiality‐dependent fracture model for hot‐rolled sections made of S355 steel

Fracture at net areas of steel sections often leads to premature failures of steel members, especially in the region of joints (bolted connections). This study develops a fracture model for hot rolled S355 steel for enabling a better understanding of the ultimate behaviour of steel sections through numerical simulations using the general‐purpose finite element software ABAQUS. Monotonic tensile tests are conducted on traditional dog‐bone plate specimens with a uniform cross‐section and notched plate specimens extracted from hot‐rolled I‐beams. Two material thicknesses and three notch radii per thickness are considered thus obtaining equivalent plastic strains at fracture over a wide range of stress triaxialities. The experimental fracture displacement is used as a threshold for the determination of the average stress triaxiality – equivalent strain history at the critical location (fracture initiation) of each plate model. Using regression analysis, an exponential approximation of the fracture locus is proposed to correlate the average stress triaxiality for a given equivalent plastic strain at fracture. The proposed model is then used to predict fracture initiation of unnotched tensile coupons and steel plates with a bolt hole in their centre extracted from the same steel sections. The test results are in good agreement with the numerical predictions thus demonstrating the efficiency of the proposed method.