Ductile fracture of high strength steel under multi-axial loading

•Tests of six types of specimens of high strength steels are conducted.•Influences of stress triaxiality and Lode angle on ductility of HSS are studied.•The applicability of three typical ductile fracture models is investigated.•The BWM can give the most accurate prediction of all tests for HSSs.•Elongation at fracture fails to describe ductility of HSS in complex stress state. The high strength steel (HSS) with a nominal yield stress not less than 460 N/mm2 has been increasingly used in engineering structures. Compared with mild steels, HSSs have higher strength but lower ductility. This paper is concerned with the ductile fracture prediction of the HSS in a wide range of stress triaxiality and Lode angle. Experimental investigation is conducted to study the influence of stress triaxiality and Lode angle on fracture ductility of three different HSSs (Q550, Q690 and Q890). The experimental results are used to calibrate three typical fracture criteria: Void Growth Model (VGM), Combined Fracture Model (CFM) and Bai-Wierzbicki Model (BWM). It is found that without of consideration of Lode angle, the VGM fails to give an accurate prediction of fracture responses of all types of experiments. Compared with VGM, the CFM gives better fitting results. However, because the stress triaxiality dependence and Lode angle dependence are separated in CFM, there still exists discrepancy between prediction and real responses. The BWM gives the most accurate fitting results and prediction for all tests on three different HSSs. Moreover, it is found that elongation at fracture fails to describe the fracture ductility of HSS in a wide range of stress states. Based on parametric study results, it is found that with increasing Lode angle dependence of plasticity, the Lode angle dependence of fracture ductility of HSSs tend to decrease.