Effect of triaxiality and temperature on void growth in a smooth and notched 40 Cr steel bar

An elastic-plastic finite element analysis is performed to study the void enlargement in a smooth and notched tensile bar made of 40 Cr steel alloy. Stress triaxiality is found to depend on the environment temperature while the void expansion differed in the radial and axial direction. The ratio of void growth increment in the radial direction to that in the axial direction varied linearly with the stress triaxiality but was not sensitive to change in the environment temperature. The present analytical results are in general agreement with those obtained earlier for void growth near a crack tip and compared well with experimental data for the variations of strain rate of void volume growth with stress triaxiality.