Abstract:The plasticity and fracture behavior of the WE43 alloy were investigated under various stress states. Mechanical experiments were conducted with special designed specimens for tension, compression and shear. The testing process was recorded and handled by digital image correlation technology. Experimental results show that WE43 alloy possesses the low tension-compression asymmetry and the fracture mechanism belongs to the ductile fracture. The plastic deformation behavior under uniaxial tension and compression was simulated with different hardening laws based on the Drucker yield function. The stress state and fracture strain were obtained by the numerical simulation. The ductile fracture behavior was numerically predicted by Brozzo, Oh, Ko-Huh and DF2016 criteria to compare with the experimental results. The results suggest that the plastic deformation can be reasonably modeled by the Swift-Voce hardening law and Drucker yield function. It is also demonstrated that the DF2016 criterion can accurately predict the fracture behavior of the alloy under various stress states.

Key words: rare-earth magnesium alloy; plastic deformation behavior; stress state effect; constitutive model; ductile fracture prediction