Rate-Dependent Cohesive Zone Model for Fracture Simulation of Soda-Lime Glass Plate

In this paper, rate-dependent cohesive zone model was established to numerical simulate the fracture process of soda-lime glass under impact loading. Soda-lime glass is widely used in architecture and automobile industry due to its transparency. To improve the accuracy of fracture simulation of soda-lime glass under impact loading, strain rate effect was taken into consideration and a rate-dependent cohesive zone model was established. Tensile-shear mixed mode fracture was also taken account. The rate-dependent cohesive zone model was implemented in the commercial finite element code ABAQUS/Explicit with the user subroutine VUMAT. The fracture behavior of a monolithic glass plate impacted by a hemispherical impactor was simulated. The simulation results demonstrated that the rate-dependent cohesive zone model is more suitable to describe the impact failure characteristics of a monolithic glass plate, compared to cohesive zone model without consideration of strain rate. Moreover, the effect of the strain rate sensitivity coefficient C, the mesh size of glass plate and the impact velocity on the fracture characteristics were studied.