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Acta Materialia 60 (2012) 2359–2368

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Deformation and failure in nodular cast iron

A. Ghahremaninezhad, K. Ravi-Chandar ⇑
Center for Mechanics of Solids, Structures and Materials, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-0235, USA

Received 5 October 2011; received in revised form 22 December 2011; accepted 22 December 2011
Available online 1 March 2012

Abstract

Ductile failure in nodular cast iron is explored through uniaxial tension and notched tension experiments. Specimens obtained
through tests interrupted at various stages of deformation and failure evolution were examined through quantitative microscopy to dis-
cern the mechanisms of failure and to quantitatively evaluate the local strain evolution. Fractographic observations were used to identify
the onset and evolution of damage processes during the deformation and failure of nodular cast iron. These tests and observations reveal
that void growth and coalescence occurred only within a narrow localized band, whose size is comparable with the size of the graphite
nodules; no statistically significant changes in the porosity were observed outside this zone.
Ó 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Damage nucleation; Failure mechanism; Porosity

1. Introduction models [4–6], and the general framework of these models is

The failure of many ductile materials used in structural
applications is typically considered to occur by the progres-
sive nucleation, growth and coalescence of damage. Micro-
scopic models of such damage are usually considered at
the continuum level, through the introduction of the idea
of a representative volume element (RVE), where damage
can be represented by internal variables. Homogenization
requires that the size of the RVE be selected so as to contain
a statistically uniform representation of the damage process
within the RVE [1,2]. The size of the RVE can vary from
about 103 mm3 for metals and ceramics to about 106 mm3
for concrete. The damage discontinuities in the RVE are
considered to be “small” with respect to the size of the
RVE, but large compared with the atomic spacing and even
grain size [3]. Numerous studies have been performed aimed
at exploring the development of damage. The class of micro-
mechanical models that incorporate void nucleation, growth
and coalescence as the damage process are typically called
Rousselier or Gurson–Tvergaard–Needleman (GTN)
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: kravi@mail.utexas.edu (K. Ravi-Chandar).
now rather well established. Tvergaard [7] and Benzerga
and Leblond [8] provided comprehensive reviews of this
approach to modeling of ductile failure. Calibration and val-
idation of these models have been attempted by numerous
investigators (see, for example, Brocks et al. [9], Dong
et al. [10], Decamp et al. [11], Pardoen et al. [12], Steglich
and Brocks [13], and Benseddiq and Imad [14]). However,
this process is inherently non-unique, since many different
combinations of parameters appear to capture the softening
part of the material/structural response [15]. In this paper we
investigate the process of deformation and evolution of fail-
ure in an initially porous material. This material was chosen
with the goal of avoiding the difficulty of modeling the com-
plex void nucleation process and examining the process of
void growth. For this purpose three different materials, sin-
tered iron, spheroidized sintered iron and nodular cast iron
(NCI), were considered as suitable candidates. However, the
sintered iron specimens could not sustain strains greater
than 2% and while the spheroidized sintered iron specimens
could be strained up to 16%, the poorly controlled heat treat-
ment produced a highly non-homogeneous microstructure
in which no meaningful correlation could be made between
specimens interrupted at different stages of the deformation.

1359-6454/$36.00 Ó 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.actamat.2011.12.037
2360 A. Ghahremaninezhad, K. Ravi-Chandar / Acta Materialia 60 (2012) 2359–2368
Therefore, sintered and spheroidized sintered iron specimens
were not considered further in this study and attention is
restricted to the NCI specimens.
This paper is organized as follows. The microstructure
of NCI used in the present work is described in Section 2.
The results of uniaxial tension tests and notched tension
tests are discussed in Sections 3 and 4, respectively. Partic-
ular attention is paid to the development of microstructural
features corresponding to different macroscopic strain lev-
els and triaxiality conditions. The conclusions from this
study regarding the growth of voids and their coalescence
are summarized in Section 5.
2. Material
Ductile cast iron or nodular cast iron (NCI) is a type of
cast iron in which the graphite nodules take on a nearly
spherical shape. Magnesium particles are usually added
as an inoculant in the casting process to provide the nuclei
from which the graphite nodules grow. The cooling time
during the manufacturing process plays a very important
role in determining the microstructure and the mechanical
properties of the cast iron. Therefore, the microstructure of
different sections of the cast material varies in the size and
number of nodules, and hence in the mechanical behavior.
In order to ensure consistency in the material used in the
experiments all the specimens were cut from the central
portion of the blank. Metallographical observations and
mechanical testing support consistency in the material
microstructure and material properties.
The nodular cast iron used in this study is an ASTM
A536 grade 65-45-12 (the grade code number indicates
the tensile strength (ksi), yield strength (ksi) and percent
elongation at failure, respectively) ductile cast iron with a
ferritic matrix that contains about 5–25% pearlite. The
chemical composition of the cast iron, as provided by the
supplier, is listed in Table 1.
Metallographic samples were prepared by sectioning the
tensile specimens in the longitudinal direction, mounting in
epoxy resin, and polishing following the standard proce-
dures down to a final polish with 0.05 lm silica particles
in colloidal suspension. Special care was exercised so as
not to cause flow of the material over the pores during the
polishing process, thereby enabling accurate measurements
of the porosity. In order to remove the polishing com-
pounds from the surface the samples were cleaned in an
Table 1
Chemical composition of the nodular cast iron.
Source: Dura-Bar, www.dura-bar.com.
Component Content (%)
Carbon 3.50–3.90
Silicon 2.25–3.00
Manganese 0.15–0.35
Sulfur 0.025 max
Phosphorus 0.05 max
ultrasonic cleaner. The samples were finally etched to reveal
the grain structure. Thirty images were taken of each
sample using a Nikon Eclipse microscope at 200
magnification and then stitched together to a size of
1.40  4.00 mm area. These images were then used to
obtain quantitative measures of grain size, void distribution
and other microstructural features. The unetched micro-
structure and etched microstructure at a higher magnifica-
tion of the NCI are shown in Fig. 1a and b, respectively.
As can be seen in the micrographs, in this hypoeutectic alloy
the graphite nodules are surrounded by grains of ferrite.
The dark phase identifiable outside the ferritic domains is
pearlite. The alternating layers of ferrite and cementite are
extremely fine and not resolved in this micrograph. Image
analysis software (NIH ImageJ) was used to obtain quanti-
tative measurements of the microstructural features. It
should be emphasized that even though extra caution was
taken in polishing the specimens to protect the surface from
polishing artifacts, due to the nature of the polishing pro-
cess there exist a number of features that appear dark and
resemble graphite nodules in the micrographs that should
be excluded in order to obtain as accurate results as possi-
ble. Observations of the microstructure at higher magnifica-
tion showed that most of these types of impurities are
smaller than 47 lm2, therefore, in all the microstructural
analysis performed dark patches smaller than 47 lm2 have
been filtered out. A shape factor F ¼ 4pA=p2 where A and
p are the area and perimeter of the nodules respectively, is
defined to characterize the shape variation of the graphite
nodules. A value of F ¼ 1 corresponds to a perfectly round
particle and the shape becomes more irregular with decreas-
ing F . The average grain size of the ferrite and the diameter
of the graphite nodules were found to be about 26  9 and
27  25 lm, respectively. The mean spacing of the nodules
is about 95  60 lm.
It has been documented in the literature [16,17] that a
weak interface between the graphite nodules and the fer-
ritic matrix triggers decohesion of the nodules at very low
plastic strain; however, there have also been investigations
that showed debonding occurring continuously over the
course of deformation [18]. We assume that the initial dis-
tribution of graphite nodules is equivalent to the initial dis-
tribution of voids; in particular, we identify the nodule
geometry with the void geometry.
In order to obtain quantitative measures of the micro-
structure, a MATLAB code was implemented to construct
a Voronoi tessellation diagram from the stitched optical
images from which the local porosities were measured
(Fig. 2). Two measures of porosity are evaluated. The local
porosity is calculated for each pore by dividing the pore
area Ap by the area of the assigned cell Av . The bulk poros-
ity is calculated as the ratio of the total area of nodules to
the area of the representative volume. Although the stere-
ological characteristics of the pores are not included in
the calculations, as pointed out by Argon and Im [19] the
frequency distribution of a pore size measured on a sec-
tioned plane is a good approximation of the density in a
 A. Ghahremaninezhad, K. Ravi-Chandar / Acta Materialia 60 (2012) 2359–2368
Graphite
nodule
Ferrite
Pearlite
Fig. 1. Microstructure of the nodular cast iron in (a) the unetched and (b) the etched conditions. Different phases present in the microstructure are
identified in the lower image.
Av
Ap
Fig. 2. Voronoi tessellation diagram used in calculating the distribution of
local porosity.
pffiffiffi
volume equal to 2 times the area of sectioned plane.
However, the results reported here are not corrected for
this approximation.
The length scale of a representative volume element
(RVE) plays a significant role in the determination of effec-
tive properties of the material. In order to characterize the
effect of the length scale on the mean as well as the stan-
dard deviation of the local porosity, sub-regions of sequen-
tially reduced dimensions (1/4, 1/9, 1/16, 1/25, 1/36, 1/49
and 1/64 of the area of the largest region) were analyzed
(see Fig. 3). The variation in the mean local porosity Ap/
Av calculated using the Voronoi tessellation procedure as
a function of RVE size is plotted in Fig. 4a. The variation
2361
(a)
(b)
in the bulk porosity calculated as the ratio of the total area
of nodules in a sub-region to the area of the sub-region is
also included in the plot for comparison. Fig. 4b shows
the variation in the standard deviation of the local porosity
with RVE size. From these results it appears that above an
RVE size of about 1200 lm the mean local porosity
becomes less sensitive to the size of the RVE. The change
in standard deviation also seems to decrease at a length
scale of about 1200 lm. Based on the above observations,
a proper size of the RVE for the material at hand would
be 1200 lm. Note that this is an extremely “large” size in
comparison with the overall specimen dimensions typically
used in experiments on NCI. In the present work the spec-
imen thickness comprises only two RVE. This estimate of
the RVE is based entirely on the geometry of the porosity,
and does not indicate whether estimates of effective field
quantities averaged with respect to this RVE could repre-
sent actual material responses. This requires further exam-
ination of the deformation and stress fields. However, all
the microstructural analyses described in the following sec-
tions were performed on an area of 1400  4000 lm2.
In the following sections we examine the evolution of
void size with deformation through interrupted uniaxial
and flat notched tension tests. While the macroscopic
deformation and stress in uniaxial tension tests are uniform
throughout the gage length (before the formation of plastic
instabilities in the form of diffuse or localized necking) with
a stress triaxiality of 1/3, deformation and stress in flat
notched specimens are non-homogeneous with a nearly
constant stress triaxiality of about 0.577 for the particular
2362 A. Ghahremaninezhad, K. Ravi-Chandar / Acta Materialia 60 (2012) 2359–2368

Fig. 3. Subregions of the initial microstructure with different length scales.

Local Porosity Standard Deviation

0.12 0.095
Bulk porosity
Local porosity
0.09
0.1
Mean Porosity

0.085
0.08
0.08

0.06
0.075

0.04
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
Length Scale - mm Length Scale - mm
(a) (b)
Fig. 4. Variation of (a) the mean and (b) the standard deviation of porosity with RVE size.

notch geometry considered in this work. The flat notched 700

D
tests are particularly useful in assessing the effect of stress C
600
triaxiality on the evolution of void nucleation and growth B
in NCI. 500
True Stress - MPa

400
3. Uniaxial tension test
300
Uniaxial tension tests were performed on standard
dumb-bell shaped specimens in order to characterize the 200

elastic–plastic behavior of the materials. Dumb-bell speci- 100

mens of 2.54 mm thickness and 6.35 mm width were cut
in the longitudinal direction from a blank of 0
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2
38.1  38.1  160.0 mm. Tensile tests were run on three True Strain
specimens in an Instron 4482 universal testing machine at
a cross-head speed of 0.254 mm min1, resulting in quasi- Fig. 5. True stress–true strain response of the nodular cast iron.
static loading at a strain rate of 104 s1. The strain and
displacement measurements were made over a gage length until abrupt failure. Thus, this specimen does not exhibit
of 20 mm using digital image correlation (DIC) (see Sutton plastic localization in the form of either diffuse or localized
et al. [20] for details of this technique). Specimen A is an necking. A power law relation was used to fit the true
unstrained sample to characterize the initial microstruc- stress–true strain curve as follows:
ture. Specimens B and C were unloaded before final failure p n
at different levels of homogeneous straining (eB ¼ 0:056, rNCI ¼ rNCI
0 ð1 þ be Þ ð1Þ
eC ¼ 0:094) in order to quantify the microstructural evolu- where rNCI
¼ 227:5 MPa is the initial yield strength,
0
tion. The final specimen (Specimen D) broke at an overall n ¼ 0:17 is the hardening exponent, ep is the plastic strain
true strain of eD ¼ 0:145. The true stress–true strain and b ¼ 2439. The Considère point for this material is at
responses determined from the tension tests are shown in en = n  1/b = 0.17, hence the absence of diffuse necking
Fig. 5. The Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio were suggests that fracture or failure by the linking up of micro-
found to be E ¼ 170 GPa and m ¼ 0:3, respectively. As scopic damage must have preceded the onset of diffuse
can be seen from Fig. 5, the load increases monotonically necking.
 A. Ghahremaninezhad, K. Ravi-Chandar / Acta Materialia 60 (2012) 2359–2368 2363

Optical micrographs of a thick section of the specimen,
obtained by stitching together a number of micrographs, is
shown in Fig. 6 for specimens A–D. Higher magnification
images of portions of these regions are shown in the figures
in the bottom row. The evolution of the microstructure
with deformation is not clearly evident from the high mag-
nification micrographs in Fig. 6. Careful examination indi-
cates that the voids appear to grow by subtle elongation in
a direction parallel to the applied tensile loading. Of
course, the spatial distribution of the nodules does not
change during deformation; it is difficult to see growth of
the pores or the evolution of the porosity of specimens
B–D corresponding to different strain levels in comparison
with the initial microstructure. Evolution of the distribu-
tion of local porosity, estimated using the Voronoi tessella-
tion procedure discussed above, is plotted in Fig. 7a, while
evolution of the distribution of void area is shown in
Fig. 7b. While there does not appear to be a statistically
significant change in the distribution of local porosity in
the specimens strained to different levels, the bulk porosity
increased from 0.10 to 0.13. However, in view of the
standard deviation in the local porosity shown in Fig. 4b,
the observed increase in bulk porosity cannot be statisti-
cally significant. This is not surprising in the light of the
fact that the RVE is quite large. A slight decrease in the
average shape factor from F ¼ 0:685 for specimen A to
F ¼ 0:670 for specimen D can be seen as a subtle change
in the shape of the voids which visibly appear to be elon-
gated in the loading direction (see Fig. 6). This indicates
a change in void shape in addition to volumetric enlarge-
ment during deformation of the microstructure, but all of
these changes are of very small magnitude in comparison
with the change in pore structure corresponding to final
failure.
4. Flat notched tension test
Flat notched specimens cut longitudinally into strips of
2.54 mm thickness, 24.13 width and 152.4 mm length from
the center portion of the cast iron blank were used in order
to extend the strain range over which the evolution of
porosity was examined (Fig. 8a). Two semicircular cut-outs

Fig. 6. Evolution of the microstructure at different stages of the tensile tests: (a) eA = 0, (b) eB = 0.056, (c) eC = 0.094 and (d) eD = 0.145. All images are to
the same scale; the scale bar is shown in (a). Note that these are stitched images and the dark horizontal bands are artifacts of image composition. Higher
magnification images are shown in the bottom row.
2364 A. Ghahremaninezhad, K. Ravi-Chandar / Acta Materialia 60 (2012) 2359–2368

0.16 flat-notched specimens. Fig. 8c and d shows the contour

A
0.14
plots of the axial and transverse strains superimposed on
B
C
the speckled surface of the specimen for specimen A. The
0.12
D axial strain is seen to be concentrated near the notch
regions, reaching values as high as 0.165. The transverse
Frequency

0.1
strain is close to zero in the middle portion of the specimen
0.08 width, indicating a nearly plane strain state, and attains a
0.06
maximum value near the notch tip region, which is
expected to be in a state of uniaxial stress. It can be seen
0.04 from Fig. 8e that the axial strain on the surface of the spec-
0.02
imen across the minimum cross-section varies from 0.037
at the mid-point to 0.165 at the notch tip. The onset of final
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
failure occurs rather abruptly at the notch tip. A complete
Local Porosity numerical analysis of the problem is required to obtain the
variation in the stress field in the specimen, however, it can
(a) be noted that due to the geometrical constraint the region
0.14
close to the root of the notch will be in a stress state close
A to uniaxial tension, whereas the middle part is in a plane
0.12 B strain state. Therefore, a gradualp increase in stress triaxial-
C ity from 1/3 at the notch tip to 1/ 3 at the minimum cross-
0.1 D section is expected.
Frequency

0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0 and are plotted in Fig. 10. As in the uniaxial tension tests,
0 1000 2000 3000
Void Area μm2
(b)
Fig. 7. Evolution with strain of the distribution of (a) local porosity and
(b) void area.
of radius 4 mm were introduced along the sides in order to
increase the stress triaxiality in the central portion of min-
imum cross-section. This modification allows us to pro-
mote and evaluate the void growth process in a different
stress state. Two tests were run with specimen B strained
to failure and the straining of specimen A interrupted
slightly before final failure so that evolution of the void
growth could be correlated with the macroscopic strain
fields measured by DIC. It should be noted that DIC mea-
sures the strains on the surface of the specimen, however, in
general the strain in the specimen midplane could be
higher, particularly when sheet mode necking is triggered
[21,22]. For our particular application, due to the absence
of significant necking prior to failure, the thickness varia-
tion was indeed found to be small. The nominal stress
(force/initial minimum cross-sectional area) vs. normalized
gage displacement (over a gage length of 20 mm) responses
for both specimens are shown in Fig. 8b. Just as in the uni-
axial tension tests, these curves continue to exhibit a posi-
tive slope until the onset of final failure. No instability in
the form of necking or shear bands was observed in the
Specimen A was sectioned along the lines a–a, b–b, and
c–c indicated in Fig. 8a to reveal the x–z planes. These sec-
tions were polished and observed using an optical micro-
scope to identify changes in the voids. These micrographs
are shown in Fig. 9, where the axial strain corresponding
to each image is also identified. The distributions of local
porosity and void area were obtained as discussed earlier
4000
these plots indicate that there is very little change in the
void size distribution, but a slight decrease in the shape fac-
tor, indicating elongation of the voids. A small increase in
the bulk porosity varying from about 0.106 at section a–a
to about 0.14 at section c–c is observed as the strain varies
from 0.037 to 0.165, but once again this is not statistically
significant in view of the required size of the RVE and the
standard deviation in the initial porosity. Interestingly, sec-
tions a–a and b–b do not indicate significant void growth
even though the stress triaxiality is higher here than that
at the notch. It should be noted, however, that the strain
levels are quite low in these regions.
Fig. 11a shows scanning electron micrographs of the
fracture surface of specimen B. The fracture surface con-
sists of three main features. First, equiaxed dimples are
observed surrounding each graphite nodule (see Fig. 11a
and b). As discussed earlier, each nodule acts as a void that
subsequently grows with strain. Coalescence with neigh-
boring voids results in ridges that outline the large equi-
axed dimples. Second, voids that are about one order of
magnitude smaller than the primary dimples are also seen
on the fracture surface (see Fig. 11c). These secondary
voids are typically observed at the boundaries of the larger
dimples and are found at the ridges where the primary
voids meet or link up. Such secondary fields of small voids
have been experimentally observed in fracture surfaces of
tensile specimens of steel and aluminum alloys (see, for
example, Cox and Low [23], Hahn and Rosenfeld [24],
 A. Ghahremaninezhad, K. Ravi-Chandar / Acta Materialia 60 (2012) 2359–2368 2365

600
x
B
500

Nominal Stress -MPa

400 A

a b c 300

y 200

a b c 100

0
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05
Normalized Gage Displacement - Δ/L

(a) (b)

(c) (d)
0.18
0.16
0.14
Axial Strain

0.12
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0
0 2 4 6 8 10
y - mm
(e)
Fig. 8. (a) Schematic diagram indicating sections a–a, b–b and c–c made across the minimum cross-section. (b) Nominal stress (force/initial minimum
cross-sectional area) vs. gage displacement (D) normalized to the gage length (L = 20 mm) response curves of the flat notched specimens. (c) Contour plot
of the axial strain at the onset of final failure. (d) Contour plot of the transverse strain at the onset of final failure. (e) Variation of the axial strain along
x ¼ 0.

and Marini et al. [25]), termed void sheets, occurring dur- examined. Optical micrographs of these sections, shown
ing coalescence of neighboring voids. Lastly, cleavage fac- in Fig. 12, reveal the morphology of the nodules (voids)
ets typical of ferrous alloys are also present on the fracture below the fracture surface. The highly localized nature of
surface, as indicated in Fig. 11d. The topology of the facets void growth and final failure is evident from a qualitative
hints at a transgranular mode of fracture. It is concluded comparison of the void dimensions in these sections with
that initially the nodules create voids that grow by plastic those on the fracture surface. This can be quantified in
flow, but coalescence can occur either by the formation two different ways. First, the void area distributions
of void sheets from a field of smaller voids or through acquired for section c–c of specimen A and from the frac-
cleavage in favorably oriented grains. However, the regions tographs of specimen B are shown in Fig. 13a. The mean
in which voids grow to such a large extent needs to be dimple in the fracture plane (the area inside the ridges
examined through additional micrography. where coalescence occurred) occupies an area of
In an effort to identify the spatial extent over which the 2500 lm2. In contrast, the mean void area in plane c–c of
damage processes that were identified from fractography specimen A at a distance of about 20 lm from the fracture
develop sections a–a, b–b and c–c of specimen B were surface is only about 1052 lm2, which corresponds to a
2366 A. Ghahremaninezhad, K. Ravi-Chandar / Acta Materialia 60 (2012) 2359–2368

Fig. 9. Optical micrographs of the sections a–a, b–b, and c–c and the corresponding surface strain levels e = 0.037, 0.049 and 0.165, respectively.

0.25 0.14
a-a a-a
b-b b-b
0.12
0.2 c-c c-c
0.1
Frequency

Frequency

0.15
0.08

0.1 0.06

0.04
0.05
0.02

0 0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 1000 2000 3000 4000
Local Porosity Void Area - μm2
(a) (b)
Fig. 10. Evolution of the distribution of (a) the local porosity and (b) the void area for specimen A.

mean diameter of 36 lm, comparable with the initial
nodule size. Second, a tessellation diagram drawn on sec-
tion c–c, as shown in Fig. 13b, in order to evaluate the local
porosity Ap/Av at different distances from the fracture
plane indicates that the local porosity along lines 1–5, inter-
preted as the average local porosity of every cell that is
intersected by these lines, remains statistically unchanged
from the initial porosity. The main upshot of this measure-
ment is the implication that fracture through void growth
and coalescence occurs in an extremely narrow zone near
the “fracture plane” and that the porosity is not a uni-
formly varying quantity. Therefore, an appropriate
description of nucleation, growth and coalescence needs
to be generated in a localized region whose extent is driven
by the microstructure of the material and, more impor-
tantly, by the statistical fluctuations in the microstructure.
5. Summary
In this paper we investigated the process of deformation
and failure in initially porous materials. NCI was used as
an example of a material with pre-existing porosity, thus
avoiding the complexity of exploring the nucleation pro-
cess. The NCI used in this study is an ASTM A536 grade
65-45-12 ductile cast iron with a ferritic matrix that con-
tains about 5–25% pearlite. The average grain size of ferrite
and the diameter of the graphite nodules were found to be
about 26  9 and 27  25 lm, respectively. Interrupted ten-
sion tests and flat notched tension tests were performed in
order to relate the evolution of void growth with deforma-
tion and stress state.
Optical image analysis software (NIH ImageJ) was used
to obtain the microstructural characteristics of the material
at different stages of deformation and different stress
states. A Voronoi tessellation diagram was employed to
quantify the local porosity distribution. No statistically
significant change in the evolution of the local porosity
or void size distribution was observed on macroscopic
straining.
The fracture surface indicates the following features.
Each nodule acts as a void that subsequently grows with
strain. Coalescence with neighboring voids results in ridges
 A. Ghahremaninezhad, K. Ravi-Chandar / Acta Materialia 60 (2012) 2359–2368 2367

(a) (b)

(d) (c)

Fig. 11. (a) Scanning electron micrographs of the fracture surface of specimen B. (b) Equiaxed dimples surrounding each graphite nodule. (c) Secondary
smaller voids at the boundary of the primary dimples. (d) Cleavage facets seen on the fracture surface.

Fig. 12. x–z Micrographs of the sections a–a, b–b and c–c of specimen B showing the evolution of the microstructure below the fracture surface.

that outline large equiaxed dimples. Voids that are about
one order of magnitude smaller than the primary dimples
are typically observed at the boundaries of the larger dim-
ples and are found at the ridges of the primary voids.
Cleavage facets typical of ferrous alloys are also present
on the fracture surface. It was concluded that initially the
nodules create voids that grow by plastic flow, but this is
terminated by a transition to deformation in a very local-
ized region over which coalescence occurs either by the for-
mation of void sheets or through cleavage.
2368 A. Ghahremaninezhad, K. Ravi-Chandar / Acta Materialia 60 (2012) 2359–2368

Line 1
0.25
Plane c-c of Specimen A,
Line 2
mean void area = 1052 μm2
Fracture surface, Line 3
mean dimple area = 2498 μm2
0.2 Line 4
Line 5
Frequency

0.15

0.1

0.05

0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000
Dimple or Void Size - μm2

(a) (b)
Fig. 13. (a) Distribution of void area acquired at section c-c of Specimen A and from the fractographs of Specimen B. (b) A Voronoi tessellation diagram
drawn on section c–c of Specimen B.

Acknowledgement
This work was performed during the course of an inves-
tigation into ductile failure under two related research pro-
grams funded by the Office of Naval Research: MURI
project N00014-01-1-A00001 and FNC project: N00014-
08-1-0189. This support is gratefully acknowledged.
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