On the ductile enlargement of voids in triaxial stress fields∗

The fracture of ductile solids has frequently been observed to result from the large growth and coalescence of microscopic voids, a process enhanced by the superposition of hydrostatic tensile stresses on a plastic deformation field. The ductile growth of voids is treated here as a problem in continuum plasticity. First, a variational principle is established to characterize the flow field in an elastically rigid and incompressible plastic...