Damage in a viscoplastic material part I: Cavity growth

The exact velocity, stress and strain rate fields around a spheroidal cavity in an infinite linear viscoplastic compressible matrix are derived analytically by the ‘three function approach’. The perturbation of the velocity field due to the cavity is the superposition of three independent modes, inducing homothetic growth, pure distortion and both volume and shape changes, respectively. This solution is then used to investigate the velocity field around a spheroidal cavity in a nonlinear viscous compressible material by means of a variational principle. The behaviour of such damaged linear and nonlinear materials will be discussed in a forthcoming companion paper.The importance of the reference strain, while studying void growth in a compressible material, is emphasized. If the axial strain is chosen as a reference, void growth is found to be enhanced at low triaxiality ratios, but lowered at high triaxiality ratios in a compressible matrix relative to an incompressible one. Finally, the transition from a power law to a linear law with intercept, at increasing strain rates, is shown to reduce damage growth rate.