An Evaluation of Gurson’s Theory of Dilatational Plasticity

Abstract

Gurson’s constitutive theory for the plastic deformation of porous metals is specialized to small deformations of power-law solids containing a dilute concentration of voids, and the resulting incremental relations are integrated for proportional stress histories to obtain a total relation between stress and strain. The predictions of the theory are then evaluated by comparing them with accurate numerical results for spherical voids obtained by Lee and Mear (1992). The modification of Gurson’s theory proposed by Tvergaard (1982) is also discussed.