Past studies from creep tests on uniaxial specimens and Bridgman notch specimens, for a P91 weld metal, showed that anisotropic behaviour (more specifically transverse isotropy) occurs in the weld metal, both in terms of creep (steady-state) strain rate behaviour and rupture times (viz. damage evolution). This paper describes the development of a finite element (FE) continuum damage mechanics methodology to deal with anisotropic creep and anisotropic damage for weld metal. The method employs a second order damage tensor following the work of Murakami and Ohno [1] along with a novel rupture stress approach to define the evolution of this tensor, taking advantage of the transverse isotropic nature of the weld metal, to achieve a reduction in the number of material constants required from test data (and hence tests) to define the damage evolution. Hill's anisotropy potential theory is employed to model the secondary creep. The theoretical model is implemented in a material behaviour subroutine within the general-purpose, non-linear FE code ABAQUS [2]. The validation of the implementation against established isotropic continuum damage mechanics solutions for the isotropic case is described. A procedure for calibrating the multiaxial damage constants from notched bar test data is described for multiaxial implementations. Also described is a study on the effect of uniaxial specimen orientation on anisotropic damage evolution.
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