Fracture Modeling of QP980 Steel: Evaluating the Rice–Tracey and DF2016 Criteria Under Diverse Loading States

The ductile fracture behavior of QP980 steel was studied under various loading conditions, including shear (SS), equibiaxial tension (EBT), plane strain tension (PST), and uniaxial tension (UT). The experimental results are compared to the predictions from the Rice–Tracey and DF2016 criteria. Excluding the Lode parameter restricts the Rice–Tracey criteria, which considers stress triaxiality only, from making reasonable predictions of fracture behavior under complicated loading conditions of PST and SS. However, it yields reasonable predictions for simple stress states, UT, and EBT. The DF2016 criteria take both the Lode parameter and stress triaxiality into account and lead to a reasonable prediction over the maximum range of stress states. Experimental findings verify that the DF2016 model adequately describes the fracture initiation and propagation mode under conditions of moderate and high triaxiality. The findings show that the DF2016 criterion presents a more robust and versatile approach toward modeling ductile fracture behavior in QP980 steel for applications in structural engineering and the automobile industry, where accurate failure modeling is important.