Duktilt

Duktilt is a term used in materials science to describe a material's propensity to undergo substantial plastic deformation before failure under mechanical loading. The concept is closely related to ductility but is framed as a broader, more integrative measure that accounts for the distribution of strain and stability during necking. The term was introduced in contemporary literature as a supplement to conventional ductility metrics to enable better comparison of materials whose deformation behavior is nonuniform or highly rate-dependent.

Measurement of duktilt is typically performed during tensile testing supplemented by digital image correlation or extensometry. The metric, often represented as a dimensionless index, combines the uniform elongation, peak necking strain, and post-necking deformation to yield a single value between zero and one, with higher values indicating greater duktilt. The exact calculation can vary between studies but aims to reflect both the extent and uniformity of plastic flow prior to fracture.

Applications include material selection for components subjected to complex loading, additive manufacturing process optimization, and constitutive modeling in simulations. Duktilt can help distinguish materials that exhibit similar fracture strains but differ in how they deform before fracture, such as materials with distributed necking versus localized necking.

Limitations include dependence on test conditions, such as temperature, strain rate, and specimen geometry, as well as potential ambiguity in cross-study comparisons. As a relatively new or disputed metric, duktilt is not universally adopted and is often used in conjunction with traditional ductility and toughness measures.