Materials insight

Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Fracture in Aluminium

"To assess the problem of containment after a blade-off accident in an aero-engine by numerical simulation the FAA has instigated a research effort concerning failure prediction in a number of relevant materials. Aluminium kicked off the program which involved an intensive testing program providing failure data under different states of stress, different strain rates and different temperatures. In particular split Hopkinson bars were used to perform dynamic punch tests on plates of different thicknesses allowing to investigate the transition between different failure modes such as petaling and plugging. Ballistic impact tests were performed at NASA GRC for the purpose of validation. This paper focuses on the numerical simulation effort and a comparison with experimental data is done. The simulations were performed with LS-DYNA and a tabulated version of the Johnson-Cook material law was developed in order to increase the generality, flexibility and user-friendliness of the material model."

P. Du Bois, Prof. S. Kan, M. Buyuk, J. He 

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Paul Du Bois

Paul Du Bois has worked as an independent consultant in the field of industrial application of large scale numerical simulations since September 1987. He has specialized in the application of explicit integration techniques for crashworthiness and impact problems.

Among Paul’s customers are most of the world’s automotive assemblers such as Daimler, GM, Ford, Opel, Fiat, Porsche, Volvo, PSA, Renault, Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai and many others including automotive suppliers and design and engineering companies. Paul’s more recent projects include a Daimler sponsored development of a generalized plasticity law for the simulation of plastics and the formulation of a tabulated hyper-elastic material law with damage for the simulation of rubber and foam.

He was involved with the joint research organization of the German automotive industry, FAT, in the working groups: ‘Side Impact Dummies’ from 1992 through 1997 and ‘Foam Materials’ (1996 until 2009). In 2003, Paul was asked by LSTC to perform a training mission at the Russian national laboratory in Snezinskh.