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The effect of strain hardening on ductile fracture resistance is unclear
and contradictory in the literature. The effect is also difficult to verify
experimentally. In this paper the complete Gurson model developed by the
authors has been applied to numerically investigate the effect of strain hardening
on ductile fracture resistance. It has been found that the predicted fracture
resistance pattern depends on the element damage strain and void coalescence
criterion. When an unrealistically large critical void volume fraction is used the
plastic strain hardening displays a positive effect on the predicted crack
resistance. However, when Thomason’s plastic limit load based void coalescence
criterion is used (the so-called complete Gurson model) plastic strain hardening
has shown to reduce the crack resistance.