Search results for " Micromechanics"
showing 10 items of 15 documents
Computational Homogenization of Heterogeneous Materials by a Novel Hybrid Numerical Scheme
2020
The Virtual Element Method (VEM) is a recent numerical technique capable of dealing with very general polygonal and polyhedral mesh elements, including irregular or non-convex ones. Because of this feature, the VEM ensures noticeable simplification in the data preparation stage of the analysis, especially for problems whose analysis domain features complex geometries, as in the case of computational micro-mechanics problems. The Boundary Element Method (BEM) is a well known, extensively used and effective numerical technique for the solution of several classes of problems in science and engineering. Due to its underlying formulation, the BEM allows reducing the dimensionality of the proble…
A Novel Numerical Formulation for Crystal Plasticity
2016
Crystal plasticity plays a crucial role in the mechanics of polycrystalline materials and it is commonly modeled within the framework of the crystal plasticity finite element method (CPFEM). In this work, an alternative formulation for small strains crystal plasticity is presented. The method is based on a boundary integral formulation for polycrystalline problems and plasticity is addressed using an initial strains approach. Voronoi-type micro-morphologies are considered in the polycrystalline case. A general grain-boundary incremental/iterative algorithm, embedding the flow and hardening rules for crystal plasticity, is developed. The key feature of the method is the expression of the mic…
Elucidating the Effect of Bimodal Grain Size Distribution on Plasticity and Fracture Behavior of Polycrystalline Materials
2020
The refinement of grains in a polycrystalline material leads to an increase in strength but as a counterpart to a decrease in elongation to fracture. Different routes are proposed in the literature to try to overpass this strength-ductility dilemma, based on the combination of grains with highly contrasted sizes. In the simplest concept, coarse grains are used to provide relaxation locations for the highly stressed fine grains. In this work, a model bimodal polycrystalline system with a single coarse grain embedded in a matrix of fine grains is considered. Numerical full-field micro-mechanical analyses are performed to characterize the impact of this coarse grain on the stress-strain const…
A three-dimensional cohesive-frictional grain-boundary micromechanical model for intergranular degradation and failure in polycrystalline materials
2013
Abstract In this study, a novel three-dimensional micro-mechanical crystal-level model for the analysis of intergranular degradation and failure in polycrystalline materials is presented. The polycrystalline microstructures are generated as Voronoi tessellations, that are able to retain the main statistical features of polycrystalline aggregates. The formulation is based on a grain-boundary integral representation of the elastic problem for the aggregate crystals, that are modeled as three-dimensional anisotropic elastic domains with random orientation in the three-dimensional space. The boundary integral representation involves only intergranular variables, namely interface displacement di…
Toward high performance renewable agave reinforced biocomposites: Optimization of fiber performance and fiber-matrix adhesion analysis
2017
Abstract The increasing sensitivity toward the environmental pollution and the recent laws on the environmental protection, have led to an increasing attention to the so called biocomposites, i.e. to ecofriendly or renewable composite materials, obtained from biopolymers reinforced by natural fibers. Although the contribution of various works reported in literature, focused on biocomposites reinforced by agave fibers, such materials are still exclusively used in the automotive industry for non-structural applications, and the implementation of high performance biocomposites for semi-structural and structural applications, is an expected, but not yet reached objective. Therefore, the present…
Boundary Element Crystal Plasticity Method
2017
A three-dimensional (3D) boundary element method for small strains crystal plasticity is described. The method, developed for polycrystalline aggregates, makes use of a set of boundary integral equations for modeling the individual grains, which are represented as anisotropic elasto-plastic domains. Crystal plasticity is modeled using an initial strains boundary integral approach. The integration of strongly singular volume integrals in the anisotropic elasto-plastic grain-boundary equations are discussed. Voronoi-tessellation micro-morphologies are discretized using nonstructured boundary and volume meshes. A grain-boundary incremental/iterative algorithm, with rate-dependent flow and har…
A BOUNDARY ELEMENT FORMULATION FOR MICROMECHANICAL HOMOGENIZATION OF POLYCRYSTALLINE MATERIALS WITH PIEZOELECTRIC COUPLING
2019
A novel boundary element formulation for the evaluation of the effective properties of threedimensional polycrystalline aggregates with piezoelectric coupling is presented. The aggregates are modelled at the scale of their constituent crystals and are artificially generated through Voronoi-Laguerre tessellations. The electro-mechanical behaviour of each crystal is represented upon introducing an ad-hoc mesh of its boundary and a generalised integral representation of the governing equations of the piezoelectric problem. The behaviour of the whole aggregate is then retrieved upon introducing a suitable set of electro-mechanical interface conditions at the grain boundaries. With respect to cl…
A multiscale approach to polycrystalline materials damage and failure
2015
A two-scale three-dimensional approach for degradation and failure in polycrystalline materials is presented. The method involves the component level and the grain scale. The damageinduced softening at the macroscale is modelled employing an initial stress boundary element approach. The microscopic degradation is explicitly modelled associating Representative Volume Elements (RVEs) to relevant points of the macro continuum and employing a cohesive-frictional 3D grain-boundary formulation to simulate intergranular degradation and failure in the Voronoi morphology. Macro-strains are downscaled as RVEs' periodic boundary conditions, while overall macro-stresses are obtained upscaling the micro…
Porosity effects on elastic properties of polycrystalline materials: a three-dimensional grain boundary formulation
2013
Polycrystalline materials are widely used in many technological applications of engineering interest. They constitute an important class of heterogeneous materials, and the investigation of the link between their macro and micro properties, main task of the micromechanics [1], is of relevant technological concern. The internal structure of a polycrystalline material is determined by the size and the shape of the grains, by their crystallographic orientation and by different type of defects within them. In this sense, the presence of internal voids, pores, is important to take into account in the determination of the polycrystalline aggregate properties. Porosity exists in almost all materia…
Intergranular damage and fracture in polycrystalline materials. A novel 3D microstructural grain-boundary formulation
2013
The design of advanced materials requires a deep understanding of degradation and failure pro- cesses. It is widely recognized that the macroscopic material properties depend on the features of the microstructure. The knowledge of this link, which is the main subject of Micromechanics [1], is of relevant technological interest, as it may enable the design of materials with specific requirements by means of suitable manipulations of the microstructure. Polycrystalline materials are used in many technological applications. Their microstructure is characterized by the grains morphology, size distribution, anisotropy, crystallographic orientation, stiffness and toughness mismatch and by the phy…