Finite element analysis of non-local effects in ductile fracture

The paper introduces a weight function for the nonlocal analysis of ductile damage that has the potential to provide approximately uniform averaged field variables over a limited region. When this region is identified with the underlying microstructural length scale of the material, the method is consistent with the view that, once damage is significant, a damaging cell behaves as a uniform entity. The analyses through which these effects have been studied concerned a unit cell idealizing a periodic array of large voids, connected by material that is capable of nucleating smaller-scale porosity.