Stationary variational estimates for the effective response and field fluctuations in nonlinear composites

This paper presents a variational method for estimating the effective constitutive response of composite materials with nonlinear constitutive behavior. The method is based on a stationary variational principle for the macroscopic potential in terms of the corresponding potential of a linear comparison composite (LCC) whose properties are the trial fields in the variational principle. When used in combination with estimates for the LCC that are exact to second order in the heterogeneity contrast, the resulting estimates for the nonlinear composite are also guaranteed to be exact to second-order in the contrast. In addition, the new method allows full optimization with respect to the properties of the LCC, leading to estimates that are fully stationary and exhibit no duality gaps. As a result, the effective response and field statistics of the nonlinear composite can be estimated directly from the appropriately optimized linear comparison composite. By way of illustration, the method is applied to a porous, isotropic, power-law material, and the results are found to compare favorably with earlier bounds and estimates. However, the basic ideas of the method are expected to work for broad classes of composites materials, whose effective response can be given appropriate variational representations, including more general elasto-plastic and soft hyperelastic composites and polycrystals.     

Bounds for nonlinear composites via iterated homogenization

Improved estimates of the Hashin–Shtrikman–Willis type are generated for the class of nonlinear composites consisting of two well-ordered, isotropic phases distributed randomly with prescribed two-point correlations, as determined by the H-measure of the microstructure. For this purpose, a novel strategy for generating bounds has been developed utilizing iterated homogenization. The general idea is to make use of bounds that may be available for composite materials in the limit when the concentration of one of the phases (say phase 1) is small. It then follows from the theory of iterated homogenization that it is possible, under certain conditions, to obtain bounds for more general values of the concentration, by gradually adding small amounts of phase 1 in incremental fashion, and sequentially using the available dilute-concentration estimate, up to the final (finite) value of the concentration (of phase 1). Such an approach can also be useful when available bounds are expected to be tighter for certain ranges of the phase volume fractions. This is the case, for example, for the “linear comparison” bounds for porous viscoplastic materials, which are known to be comparatively tighter for large values of the porosity. In this case, the new bounds obtained by the above-mentioned “iterated” procedure can be shown to be much improved relative to the earlier “linear comparison” bounds, especially at low values of the porosity and high triaxialities. Consistent with the way in which they have been derived, the new estimates are, strictly, bounds only for the class of multi-scale, nonlinear composites consisting of two well-ordered, isotropic phases that are distributed with prescribed H-measure at each stage in the incremental process. However, given the facts that the H-measure of the sequential microstructures is conserved (so that the final microstructures can be shown to have the same H-measure), and that H-measures are insensitive to length scales, it is conjectured that the new bounds may hold for more general classes of microstructures with prescribed volume fractions and H-measures (independent of the separation of length scales hypotheses that was made in the derivation of the result using iterated homogenization).     

A method of plasticity for general aligned spheroidal void or fiber-reinforced composites

Based on the general concept of the secant moduli method, together with a new way of evaluating the average matrix effective stress originally proposed by Qiu and Weng (“A Theory of Plasticity for Porous Materials and Particle-Reinforced Composites”, ASME J. Appl. Mech. (1992), 59, 261.), a method for nonlinear effective properties of general aligned fiber or void composites is proposed. The method is capable of predicting composite (especially for porous materials) yielding under a hydrostatic load. Compared to the Tandon and Weng (“A Theory of Particle-Reinforced Plasticity,” ASME J. Appl. Mech. (1988), 55, 126.), model the proposed method always gives softer prediction in the uniaxial tension. The proposed method will predict the same nonlinear stress and strain relation as the Ponte Castaneda (“The Effective Mechanical Properties of Nonlinear Isotropic Composite,” J. Mech. Phys. Solids (1991), 39, 45.) variational model if the same estimates or bounds for the linear comparison composite are adopted.     

Tangent Second-Order Estimates for the Large-Strain, Macroscopic Response of Particle-Reinforced Elastomers

An approximate homogenization method is proposed and used to obtain estimates for the effective constitutive behavior and associated microstructure evolution in hyperelastic composites undergoing finite-strain deformations. The method is a modified version of the “tangent second-order” procedure (Ponte Castañeda and Tiberio in J. Mech. Phys. Solids 48:1389, 2000), and can be used to provide estimates for the nonlinear elastic composites in terms of corresponding estimates for suitably chosen “linear comparison composites”. The method makes use of the “tangent” moduli of the phases, evaluated at suitable averages of the deformation gradient, and yields a constitutive relation accounting for the evolution of characteristic features of the underlying microstructure in the composites, when subjected to large deformations. Satisfaction of the exact, macroscopic incompressibility constraint is ensured by means of an energy decoupling approximation splitting the elastic energy into a purely “distortional” component, together with a “dilatational” component. The method is applied to elastomers containing random distributions of aligned, rigid, ellipsoidal inclusions, and explicit analytical estimates are obtained for the special case of spherical inclusions distributed isotropically in an incompressible neo-Hookean matrix. In addition, the method is also applied to two-dimensional composites with random distributions of aligned, elliptical fibers, and the results are compared with corresponding results of earlier homogenization estimates and finite element simulations.     

Field fluctuations and macroscopic properties for nonlinear composites

A recently introduced nonlinear homogenization method [J. Mech. Phys. Solids 50 ( 2002) 737–757] is used to estimate the effective behavior and the associated strain and stress fluctuations in two-phase, power-law composites with aligned-fiber microstructures, subjected to anti-plane strain, or in-plane strain loading. Using the Hashin–Shtrikman estimates for the relevant “linear comparison composite,” results are generated for two-phase systems, including fiber-reinforced and fiber-weakened composites. These results, which are known to be exact to second-order in the heterogeneity contrast, are found to satisfy all known bounds. Explicit analytical expressions are obtained for the special case of rigid-ideally plastic composites, including results for arbitrary contrast and fiber concentration. The effective properties, as well as the phase averages and fluctuations predicted for these strongly nonlinear composites appear to be consistent with deformation mechanisms involving shear bands. More specifically, for the case where the fibers are stronger than the matrix, the predictions appear to be consistent with the shear bands tending to avoid the fibers, while the opposite would be true for the case where the fibers are weaker.     

An energy-based method to determine material constants in nonlinear rheology with applications

Many polymer-type materials show a rate-dependent and nonlinear rheological behavior. Such a response may be modeled by using a series of spring-dashpot systems. However, in order to cover different time scales the number of systems may become unreasonably large. A more appropriate treatment based on continuum mechanics will be presented herein. This approach uses representation theorems for deriving material equations and allows for a systematic increase in modeling complexity. Moreover, we propose an approach based on energy to determine thematerial parameters.This method results in a simple linear regression problemeven for highly nonlinearmaterial equations. Therefore, the inverse problem leads to a unique solution. The significance of the proposed method is that the stored and dissipated energies necessary for the procedure are measurable quantities. We apply the proposed method to a “semi-solid” material and measure its material parameters by using a simple-shear rheometer.     

Estimation of very narrow bounds to the behavior of nonlinear incompressible elastic composites

Variational bounds for the effective behavior of nonlinear composites are improved by incorporating more-detailed morphological information. Such bounds, which are obtained from the generalized Hashin–Shtrikman variational principles, make use of a reference material with the same microstructure as the nonlinear composite. The geometrical information is contained in the effective properties of the reference material, which are explicitly present in the analytical formulae of the nonlinear bounds. In this paper, the variational approach is combined with estimates for the effective properties of the reference composite via the asymptotic homogenization method (AHM), and applied to a hexagonally periodic fiber-reinforced incompressible nonlinear elastic composite, significantly improving some recent results.     

Linear and Nonlinear Aerodynamic Theory of Interaction between Flexible Long Structure and Wind

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Orthotropically textured elastic aggregates of cubic crystals

The linear orthotropic relations between stress and infinitesimal strain require only seven, instead of the usual nine, independent elastic moduli, and one of them can be identified as a bulk modulus coincident with that common to all the grains. Each of the remaining six overall moduli is placed between upper and lower, “Voigt-Reuss-Hill”, and also “Hashin- Shtrikman”, bounds, in terms of the grain moduli and of three measurable parameters that take account of the particular mix of lattice orientations. One or more of them can be determined at once in exceptional cases where the grains all have a particular fixed or somewhat variable lattice orientation: the upper and lower bounds come to the appropriate coincidence then. Generally the vagaries of the configuration have an influence in keeping each pair of bounds apart, but effective estimates of the overall elastic moduli can be offered, except perhaps when the grains have a very pronounced cubic anisotropy. We shall refer in particular to the more symmetrical, tetragonal and transversely isotropic, textures for which correspondingly fewer overall moduli and orientation parameters are required.     

Elastic-bound conditions for energetically optimal elasticity and their implications for biomimetic propulsion systems

Minimising the energy consumption associated with periodic motion is a priority common to a wide range of technologies and organisms. These include many forms of biological and biomimetic propulsion system, such as flying insects. Linear and nonlinear elasticity can play an important role in optimising the energetic behaviour of these systems, via linear or nonlinear resonance. However, existing methods for computing energetically optimal nonlinear elasticities struggle when actuator energy regeneration is imperfect: when the system cannot reuse work performed on the actuator, as occurs in many realistic systems. Here, we develop a new analytical method that overcomes these limitations. Our method provides exact nonlinear elasticities minimising the mechanical power consumption required to generate a target periodic response, under conditions of imperfect energy regeneration. We demonstrate how, in general parallel- and series-elastic actuation systems, imperfect regeneration can lead to a set of non-unique optimal nonlinear elasticities. This solution space generalises the energetic properties of linear resonance, and is described completely via bounds on the system work loop: the elastic-bound conditions. The choice of nonlinear elasticities from within these bounds leads to new tools for systems design, with particular relevance to biomimetic propulsion systems: tools for controlling the trade-off between actuator peak power and duty cycle; for using unidirectional actuators to generate energetically optimal oscillations; and further. More broadly, these results lead to new perspectives on the role of nonlinear elasticity in biological organisms, and new insights into the fundamental relationship between nonlinear resonance, nonlinear elasticity, and energetic optimality.

     

纤维增强陶瓷基复合材料的D失效判据

经典唯象强度理论适用于正交各向异性线弹性体。对于非线性纤维增强复合材料,通过加卸载试验和损伤力学的分析方法,可以得到一种虚拟的线性化应力-应变关系;依据损伤等效假设,针对线性损伤和非线性损伤,对基于应力的经典二次失效准则进行变换,建立了一种基于损伤的强度理论,即“D失效判据”,这一强度理论可以作为经典判据的补充和扩展。针对平纹编织C/SiC复合材料的拉/剪组合试验,进行了实例计算,结果表明：利用D失效判据预测的失效包络线比蔡-希尔准则的预测曲线低,而且,失效曲线的形式与材料的损伤演化规律相关。     

Breakdown of elasticity theory for jammed hard-particle packings: conical nonlinear constitutive theory

Hard-particle packings have provided a rich source of outstanding theoretical problems and served as useful starting points to model the structure of granular media, liquids, living cells, glasses, and random media. The nature of “jammed” hard-particle packings is a current subject of keen interest. We demonstrate that the response of jammed hard-particle packings to global deformations cannot be described by linear elasticity (even for small particle displacements) but involves a “conical” nonlinear constitutive theory. It is the singular nature of the hard-particle potential that leads to the breakdown of linear elasticity. Interestingly, a nonlinear theory arises because the feasible particle displacements (leading to unjamming) depend critically on the local spatial arrangement of the particles, implying a directionality in the feasible strains that is absent in particle systems with soft potentials. Mathematically, the set of feasible strains has a conical structure, i.e., components of the imposed strain tensor generally obey linear inequalities. The nature of the nonlinear behavior is illustrated by analyzing several specific packings. Finally, we examine the conditions under which a packing can be considered to “incompressible” in the traditional sense.     

Second-order homogenization estimates for nonlinear composites incorporating field fluctuations: I—theory

This paper is concerned with the development of an improved second-order homogenization method incorporating field fluctuations for nonlinear composite materials. The idea is to combine the desirable features of two different, earlier methods making use of “linear comparison composites”, the properties of which are chosen optimally from suitably designed variational principles. The first method (Ponte Castañeda, J. Mech. Phys. Solids 39 (1991) 45) makes use of the “secant” moduli of the phases, evaluated at the second moments of the strain field over the phases, and delivers bounds, but these bounds are only exact to first-order in the heterogeneity contrast. The second method (Ponte Castañeda, J. Mech. Phys. Solids 44 (1996) 827) makes use of the “tangent” moduli, evaluated at the phase averages (or first moments) of the strain field, and yields estimates that are exact to second-order in the contrast, but that can violate the bounds in some special cases. These special cases turn out to correspond to situations, such as percolation phenomena, where field fluctuations, which are captured less accurately by the second-order method than by the bounds, become important. The new method delivers estimates that are exact to second-order in the contrast, making use of generalized secant moduli incorporating both first- and second-moment information, in such a way that the bounds are never violated. Some simple applications of the new theory are given in Part II of this work.     

Dynamic rheological properties of a fumed silica grease

The thermo-rheological characteristics of a fumed silica lubricating grease in linear and nonlinear oscillatory experiments have been investigated. The material rheological behavior represents a soft solid being thermo-rheologically complex. There is an abnormal temperature dependency in the range of ??10 to 10 °C which is related to the phase transition of the base oil. The dynamic moduli data in linear viscoelastic envelop (LVE) have been modeled using mode-coupling theory (MCT) in the whole temperature range. Two main relaxation mechanisms can be identified through linear and nonlinear viscoelastic properties related to interaction of the primary particle and its neighbor particles as well as a slow relaxation process which represents the escape of this particle from its “cage”. Finally, it is demonstrated that the dominant yielding process in large amplitude oscillatory experiments can be explained based on either particle cage rupture (consistent with MCT framework) or particle “hopping” out of its cage proposed in soft glassy rheology (SGR) model. It will be discussed that the governing mechanism depends on the applied frequency.     

Newton iterative identification for a class of output nonlinear systems with moving average noises

This paper discusses iterative identification problems for a class of output nonlinear systems (i.e., Wiener nonlinear systems) with moving average noises from input–output measurement data, based on the Newton iterative method. The basic idea is to decompose a nonlinear system into two subsystems, to replace the unknown variables in the information vectors with their corresponding estimates at the previous iteration, and to present a Newton iterative identification method using the hierarchical identification principle. The numerical simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithms are effective.     

Nonlinear axisymmetric deformations of an elastic tube under external pressure

The problem of the finite axisymmetric deformation of a thick-walled circular cylindrical elastic tube subject to pressure on its external lateral boundaries and zero displacement on its ends is formulated for an incompressible isotropic neo-Hookean material. The formulation is fully nonlinear and can accommodate large strains and large displacements. The governing system of nonlinear partial differential equations is derived and then solved numerically using the C++ based object-oriented finite element library Libmesh. The weighted residual-Galerkin method and the Newton-Krylov nonlinear solver are adopted for solving the governing equations. Since the nonlinear problem is highly sensitive to small changes in the numerical scheme, convergence was obtained only when the analytical Jacobian matrix was used. A Lagrangian mesh is used to discretize the governing partial differential equations. Results are presented for different parameters, such as wall thickness and aspect ratio, and comparison is made with the corresponding linear elasticity formulation of the problem, the results of which agree with those of the nonlinear formulation only for small external pressure. Not surprisingly, the nonlinear results depart significantly from the linear ones for larger values of the pressure and when the strains in the tube wall become large. Typical nonlinear characteristics exhibited are the “corner bulging” of short tubes, and multiple modes of deformation for longer tubes.     

A pattern-based method for bounding the effective response of a nonlinear composite

This paper deals with the prediction of the effective properties of nonlinear composites. Rather than bounding the effective energy, this work aims at bounding directly the effective stress-strain response, by extending a method originally introduced by Milton and Serkov (J. Mech. Phys. Solids 48 (2000) 1295) and recently refined by Talbot and Willis (Proc. Roy. Soc. 460 (2004) 2705). In this paper, bounding the effective response is achieved by introducing a linear comparison composite with the same micro-geometry as the given nonlinear composite, as Ponte Castañeda (J. Mech. Phys. Solids 39 (1991) 45) did for the energy. It is found that any lower bound for the energy of the linear comparison composite generates a corresponding bound for the stress-strain response of the nonlinear composite. A selection of examples is presented to illustrate the method and compare the bounds obtained with existing results.     

Long time behavior of solutions to coupled Burgers-complex Ginzbury-Landau (Burgers-CGL) equations for flames governed by sequential reaction

This paper studies the existence and long time behavior of the solutions to the coupled Burgers-complex Ginzburg-Landau （Burgers-CGL） equations, which are derived from the nonlinear evolution of the coupled long-scale oscillatory and monotonic instabilities of a uniformly propagating combustion wave governed by a sequential chem- ical reaction, having two flame fronts corresponding to two reaction zones with a finite separation distance between them. This paper firstly shows the existence of the global solutions to these coupled equations via subtle transforms, delicate a priori estimates and a so-called continuity method, then prove the existence of the global attractor and establish the estimates of the upper bounds of Hausdorff and fractal dimensions for the attractor.     

On stability and instability of a compressed block pressed to a smooth basement

We study the problem on the stability of the equilibrium of a compressed homogeneous nonlinearly elastic body having the shape of a rectangular parallelepiped (block). The conditions of free sliding along the block face planes (with possible separation) are posed on all but one block faces. On the remaining face, a normal pressing “dead” load uniformly distributed over the surface is given. We obtain strict upper and lower bounds for the critical values of compression stresses, which coincide in order of magnitude with the characteristic elastic moduli of the material in the equilibrium under study; these estimates are independent of the relations between the block dimensions in the entire range of possible variation of the latter. The result indirectly confirms that the primary instability in the problem under study has a surface character (is localized near the kinematically free face with a given load) for any relations between the block dimensions and is characterized by the absence of separation from the basement even for an arbitrarily thin plate. This also implies that the “cantilever approximation” (whose application to similar problems has been attempted in the literature) cannot be used for the stability analysis in this situation in principle.     

Bounds for the non-local effective properties of random media

The paper deals with a random medium subjected to a static scalar field with inhomogeneous mean values. Then, effective linear material parameters show dispersion, i.e. they depend on the “wave vector” k of the mean field. The variational methods of P.H. Dederichs and R. Zeller (1973) are generalized to derive upper and lower bounds for scalar effective material parameters as functions of k. In the limit k → 0 (homogeneous mean fields), bounds of the Hashin-Shtrikman type are reproduced. For k → ∞, the bounds coincide with the exact result. In the general case, a two-point moment of the stochastic material parameter is involved. Especially, composites with cell structure and binary mixtures are considered. Detailed calculations are carried out for effective dielectricity, relating mean electric displacement to the mean electric field (which is mathematically equivalent to electrical and thermal conductivities and other scalar parameters), of a binary system composed of nearly spherical grains of equal size.