A Constitutive Model for Plastic Damage of Ductile Materials

An elasto-plastic-damage constitutive model for ductile materials is proposed within the framework of a thermodynamic approach of continuum damage mechanics (CDM) in which internal irreversible thermodynamic changes of micro-structure of materials such as plastic deformation and damage evolution are considered as thermodynamic state variables. The new constitutive model can predict not only the elasto-plastic behaviors but also the sequential stiffness degradation process of ductile materials more rationally.