Comparison of phase-field models of fracture coupled with plasticity
In the last few years, several authors have proposed different phase-field models aimed at describing ductile fracture phenomena. Most of these models fall within the class of variational approaches to fracture proposed by Francfort and Marigo [13]. For the case of brittle materials, the key concept due to Griffith consists in viewing crack growth as the result of a competition between bulk elastic energy and surface energy. For ductile materials, however, an additional contribution to the energy dissipation is present, related to plastic deformations.