Characteristic length in ductile damage model in ABAQUS

Hi All,

I want to model a dogbone specimen made from polycarbonate.

I model it using linear elastic plasticity coupled with ductile damage model.

For the damage, we are going to use the tabular form to described the damage evolution d with respect to equivalent plastic strain epsilon_p.

In abaqus, it is written that we need to input the d with respect of equivalent plastic displacement (u_p) instead of epsilon_p via equation u_p = epsilon_p \times L; where L is the characteristic length.

Can someone explained to me how to get this value of L? I check in the .msg file, in that file, they give characteristic element length = xxx. Should I use this value? Did someone has experience with this before?

best,

Ditho