Abstract: The current study performed a finite element analysis of the strain localization behavior of a voided ductile material using a non-local plasticity formulation in which the yield strength depends on both an equivalent plastic strain measurement (hardening parameter) and Laplacian equivalent. The introduction of gradient terms to the yield function was found to play an important role in simulating the strain localization behavior of the voided ductile material. The effect of the mesh size and characteristic length on the strain localization were also investigated. An FEM simulation based on the proposed non-local plasticity revealed that the load-strain curves of the voided ductile material subjected to plane strain tension converged to one curve, regardless of the mesh size. In addition, the results using non-local plasticity also exhibited that the dependence of the deformation behavior of the material on the mesh size was much less sensitive than that with classical local plasticity and could be successfully eliminated through the introduction of a large value for the characteristic length.

Key words: Non-local, Characteristic length, Void, Damage growth, Gradient-dependent plasticity...