Article Assessment of ductile failure models in single-pass wire drawing processes Alvaro A Gonza ´lez 1 , Diego J Celentano 2 and Marcela A Cruchaga 1 Abstract The present work reports a comparative study of ductile failure models applied to an Al-2011 aluminum alloy single-pass wire drawing process using different reductions. The material damage experienced in the wire after passing through the die is evaluated using the well-known Rice and Tracey, Cockcroft and Latham, Brozzo and Modified Chaouadi models. Due to the fact that nonrealistic damage predictions are found for the highest studied wire reduction, an alternative uncoupled failure criterion combining the effect of deformation and triaxility is proposed. The ability of these five models in predicting the formation of chevrons in the process is the main focus of this research. First, the model parameters are character- ized by means of numerical simulations of the tensile test. Then, the predictions of the numerical analyses of the drawing process are compared with available experimental results where physical evidence of chevrons was found. Relevant variables are analyzed to determine their incidence in the formation of central bursts. Finally, the performance of this new model is assessed for the full reduction scenarios. Keywords Wire drawing, ductile fracture, damage, chevron formation, central bursting Introduction In the metal-mechanical industry, wire production is carried out by means of the well-known plastic forming process called drawing, which reduces the cross-section of the material by pulling it through a rigid die to induce plastic deformations in the material. This process takes place either in one step (single-pass) or in several steps (multi-pass). Wire drawing is mainly characterized geometrically by the input diameter (d i ) and the output diameter (d o ), giving rise to the total reduction achieved at each drawing die (1(d o /d i ) 2 ). Moreover, each die has a characteristic angle (a). A schematic view of International Journal of Damage Mechanics 0(0) 1–16 ! The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1056789517704029 journals.sagepub.com/home/ijd 1 Departamento de Ingenierı ´a Meca ´nica, Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH), Chile 2 Departamento de Ingenierı ´a Meca ´nica y Metalu ´rgica, Pontificia Universidad Cato ´lica de Chile, Chile Corresponding author: Diego J Celentano, Pontificia Universidad Cato ´lica de Chile, Av. Vicun ˜a Mackenna 4860, Santiago de Chile, 7820436, Chile. Email: dcelentano@ing.puc.cl