Negative Poisson's ratios in composites with star-shaped inclusions: a numerical homogenization approach

Summary Materials with specific microstructural characteristics and composite structures are able to exhibit negative Poisson's ratio. This result has been proved for continuum materials by analytical methods in previous works of the first author, among others [1]. Furthermore, it also has been shown to be valid for certain mechanisms involving beams or rigid levers, springs or sliding collars frameworks and, in general, composites with voids having a nonconvex microstructure.Recently microstructures optimally designed by the homogenization approach have been verified. For microstructures composed of beams, it has been postulated that nonconvex shapes with re-entrant corners are responsible for this effect [2]. In this paper, it is numerically shown that mainly the shape of the re-entrant corner of a non-convex, star-shaped, microstructure influences the apparent (phenomenological) Poisson's ratio. The same is valid for continua with voids or for composities with irregular shapes of inclusions, even if the individual constituents are quite usual materials. Elements of the numerical homogenization theory are reviewed and used for the numerical investigation. Accepted for publication 10 September 1996     

Mean-field homogenization of elasto-viscoplastic composites based on a general incrementally affine linearization method

We propose a general formulation – which we believe to be new – for the mean-field homogenization of inclusion-reinforced elasto-viscoplastic composites assuming small strains. Our proposal is based on an interplay between constitutive equations and numerical algorithms, and the key ideas behind it are the following. The evolution equations for inelastic strain and internal variables at the beginning of each time interval are linearized around the ending time of the same interval. The linearized equations are then numerically integrated using a fully implicit backward Euler scheme. The obtained algebraic equations lead to an incrementally affine stress–strain relation which involves two important terms. The first one is the algorithmic tangent operator, obtained by consistent linearization of the time discretized constitutive equations. The second term is a new one and called an affine strain increment. The proposal leads to thermoelastic-like relations directly in the time domain, and not in the Laplace–Carson (L–C) one. There is no need for viscoelastic-type integral rewriting of the evolution equations, for L–C transforms, or for numerical inversion back from L–C to time domains. The proposed method can be readily applied to sophisticated elasto-viscoplastic models with an arbitrary set of scalar or tensor internal variables, and is valid for multi-axial, non-monotonic and non-proportional loading histories. The theory is applied in detail to a well-known constitutive model, and verified against finite element simulations of representative volume elements or unit cells, for a number of composite materials.     

Homogenization of long fiber reinforced composites including fiber bending effects

This paper presents a homogenization method, which accounts for intrinsic size effects related to the fiber diameter in long fiber reinforced composite materials with two independent constitutive models for the matrix and fiber materials. A new choice of internal kinematic variables allows to maintain the kinematics of the two material phases independent from the assumed constitutive models, so that stress–deformation relationships, can be expressed in the framework of hyper-elasticity and hyper-elastoplasticity for the fiber and the matrix materials respectively. The bending stiffness of the reinforcing fibers is captured by higher order strain terms, resulting in an accurate representation of the micro-mechanical behavior of the composite. Numerical examples show that the accuracy of the proposed model is very close to a non-homogenized finite-element model with an explicit discretization of the matrix and the fibers.     

Numerical simulation of elasto-plastic deformation of composites: evolution of stress microfields and implications for homogenization models

The deformation of a composite made up of a random and homogeneous dispersion of elastic spheres in an elasto-plastic matrix was simulated by the finite element analysis of three-dimensional multiparticle cubic cells with periodic boundary conditions. “Exact” results (to a few percent) in tension and shear were determined by averaging 12 stress-strain curves obtained from cells containing 30 spheres, and they were compared with the predictions of secant homogenization models. In addition, the numerical simulations supplied detailed information of the stress microfields, which was used to ascertain the accuracy and the limitations of the homogenization models to include the nonlinear deformation of the matrix. It was found that secant approximations based on the volume-averaged second-order moment of the matrix stress tensor, combined with a highly accurate linear homogenization model, provided excellent predictions of the composite response when the matrix strain hardening rate was high. This was not the case, however, in composites which exhibited marked plastic strain localization in the matrix. The analysis of the evolution of the matrix stresses revealed that better predictions of the composite behavior can be obtained with new homogenization models which capture the essential differences in the stress carried by the elastic and plastic regions in the matrix at the onset of plastic deformation.     

Micromechanics of particle-reinforced elasto-viscoplastic composites: Finite element simulations versus affine homogenization

The micromechanics of elasto-viscoplastic composites made up of a random and homogeneous dispersion of spherical inclusions in a continuous matrix was studied with two methods. The first one is an affine homogenization approach, which transforms the local constitutive laws into fictitious linear thermo-elastic relations in the Laplace–Carson domain so that corresponding homogenization schemes can apply, and the temporal response is computed after a numerical inversion of Laplace transform. The second method is the direct numerical simulation by finite elements of a three-dimensional representative volume element of the composite microstructure. The numerical simulations carried out over different realizations of the composite microstructure showed very little scatter and thus provided – for the first time – “exact” results in the elasto-viscoplastic regime that can be used as benchmarks to check the accuracy of other models. Overall, the predictions of the affine homogenization model were excellent, regardless of the volume fraction of spheres, of the loading paths (shear, uniaxial tension and biaxial tension as well as monotonic and cyclic deformation), particularly at low strain rates. It was found, however, that the accuracy decreased systematically as the strain rate increased. The detailed information of the stress and strain microfields given by the finite element simulations was used to analyze the source of this difference, so that better homogenization methods can be developed.     

Optimization of the collocation inversion method for the linear viscoelastic homogenization

The effective behaviour of linear viscoelastic heterogeneous material can be derived from the correspondence principle and the inversion of the obtained symbolic homogenized behavior. Various numerical methods were proposed to carry out this inversion. The collocation method, widely used, within this framework rests on a discretization of the characteristic spectrum in a sum of discrete lines for which it is necessary to determine the intensities and the positions by the minimization of the difference between the exact temporal function and its approximation. The classical method is based on a priori choice of the lines positions and on the optimization of their intensities. It is shown here that the combined optimization of the positions and the (positive) intensities lead to a minimization problem under constraints. In the simple case of an incompressible isotropic two-phase material, the assessment of the effective relaxation function with a continuum spectra or made up of discrete lines proves that the proposed method improves the predictions of the classical approach.     

A study on validity of using average fiber aspect ratio for mechanical properties of aligned short fiber composites with different fiber aspect ratios

A closed-form solution using the actual distribution of the fiber aspect ratio is proposed for predicting the stiffness of aligned short fiber composite. The present model is the simplified form of Takao and Taya’s model and the extended version of Taya and Chou’s model, where Eshelby’s equivalent inclusion method modified for finite fiber volume fraction is employed. The validity of using average fiber aspect ratio for predicting the composite stiffness is justified in terms of the scatter of fiber aspect ratio, fiber volume fraction, and constituents‘ Young’s modulus ratio, comparing with the results by the present model. The guideline for selection of either the actual distribution or the average fiber aspect ratio is presented for the better prediction of the composite stiffness.     

Material sensitivity analysis in homogenization of linear elastic composites

Summary  The main goal of the paper is to present theoretical aspects and the finite element method (FEM) implementation of the sensitivity analysis in homogenization of composite materials with linear elastic components, using effective modules approach. The deterministic sensitivity analysis of effective material properties is presented in a general form for an n-components periodic composite, and is illustrated by the examples of 1D as well as of 2D heterogeneous structures. The results of the sensitivity analysis presented in the paper confirm the usefulness of the homogenization method in computational analysis of composite materials the method may be applied to computational optimization of engineering composites, to the shape-sensitivity studies and, after some probabilistic extensions, to stochastic sensitivity analysis of random composites. Received 10 November 2000; accepted for publication 24 April 2001     

Antiplane magneto-electro-elastic effective properties of three-phase fiber composites

In the present work, applying the asymptotic homogenization method (AHM), the derivation of the antiplane effective properties for three-phase magneto-electro-elastic fiber unidirectional reinforced composite with parallelogram cell symmetry is reported. Closed analytical expressions for the antiplane local problems on the periodic cell and the corresponding effective coefficients are provided. Matrix and inclusions materials belong to symmetry class 6mm. Numerical results are reported and compared with the eigenfunction expansion-variational method (EEVM) and other theoretical models. Good agreements are found for these comparisons. In addition, with the herein implemented solution, it is possible to reproduce the effective properties of the reduced cases such as piezoelectric or elastic composites obtaining good agreements with previous reports.     

A variational form of the equivalent inclusion method for numerical homogenization

Due to its relatively low computational cost, the equivalent inclusion method is an attractive alternative to traditional full-field computations of heterogeneous materials formed of simple inhomogeneities (spherical, ellipsoidal) embedded in a homogeneous matrix. The method can be seen as the discretization of the Lippmann–Schwinger equation with piecewise polynomials. Contrary to the original approach of Moschovidis and Mura, who discretized the strong form of the Lippmann–Schwinger equation through Taylor expansions, we propose in the present paper a Galerkin discretization of the weak form of this equation. Combined with the new, mixed boundary conditions recently introduced by the authors, the resulting method is particularly well-suited to homogenization. It is shown that this new, variational approach has a number of benefits: (i) the resulting linear system is well-posed, (ii) the numerical solution converges to the exact solution as the maximum degree of the polynomials tends to infinity and (iii) the method can provide rigorous bounds on the apparent properties of the statistical volume element, provided that the matrix is stiffer (or softer) than all inhomogeneities. This paper presents the formulation and implementation of the new, variational form of the equivalent inclusion method. Its efficiency is investigated through numerical applications in 2D and 3D elasticity.     

Interpretation of experimental data for Poisson's ratio of highly nonlinear materials

The Poisson's ratio of a material is strictly defined only for small strain linear elastic behavior. In practice, engineering strains are often used to calculate Poisson's ratio in place of the mathematically correct true strains with only very small differences resulting in the case of many engineering amterials. The engineering strain definition is often used even in the inelastic region, for example, in metals during plastic yielding. However, for highly nonlinear elastic materials, such as many biomaterials, smart materials and microstructured materials, this convenient extension may be misleading, and it becomes advantageous to define a strainvarying Poisson's function. This is analogous to the use of a tangent modulus for stiffness. An important recent application of such a Poisson's function is that of auxetic materials that demonstrate a negative Poisson's ratio and are often highly strain dependent. In this paper, the importance of the use of a Poisson's function in appropriate circumstances is demonstrated. Interpretation methods for coping with error-sensitive data or small strains are also described.     

Near-zero Poisson's ratio and suppressed mechanical anisotropy in strained black phosphorene/SnSe van der Waals heterostructure: a first-principles study

Black phosphorene (BP) and its analogs have attracted intensive attention due to their unique puckered structures, anisotropic characteristics, and negative Poisson's ratio. The van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures assembly by stacking different materials show novel physical properties, however, the parent materials do not possess. In this work, the first-principles calculations are performed to study the mechanical properties of the vdW heterostructure. Interestingly, a near-zero Poisson's ratio v_zx is found in BP/SnSe heterostructure. In addition, compared with the parent materials BP and SnSe with strong in-plane anisotropic mechanical properties, the BP/SnSe heterostructure shows strongly suppressed anisotropy. The results show that the vdW heterostructure has quite different mechanical properties compared with the parent materials, and provides new opportunities for the mechanical applications of the heterostructures.     

界面特性对短纤维金属基复合材料蠕变行为的影响

基于短纤维增强金属基复合材料(MMC)的单纤维三维模型(三相)，利用粘弹性有限元分析方法对影响金属基复合材料的蠕变行为的因素进行了较为系统的分析。研究中主要讨论了界面特性和纤维取向角对金属基复合材料的蠕变性能的影响。研究结果发现，界面特性诸如厚度、模量和应力指数都对纤维最大轴应力和稳定蠕变率产生影响：稳态蠕变率随界面模量的增大而逐渐减小，当高于基体模量时基本保持不变；纤维轴应力的变化与蠕变率正好相反。稳态蠕变率随界面厚度、应力指数的增加而增大；而轴应力则随之减小。同时不同的纤维取向也影响金属基复合材料蠕变时的轴应力分布和稳态蠕变率。     

A homogenization analysis of the field theoretic approach to the quasi-continuum method

Using the orbital-free density functional theory as a model theory, we present an analysis of the field theoretic approach to quasi-continuum method. In particular, by perturbation method and multiple scale analysis, we provide a formal justification for the validity of numerical coarse-graining of various fields in the quasi-continuum reduction of field theories by taking the homogenization limit. Further, we derive the homogenized equations that govern the behavior of electronic fields in regions of smooth deformations. Using Fourier analysis, we determine the far-field solutions for these fields in the presence of local defects, and subsequently estimate cell-size effects in computed defect energies.     

A variational formulation for the incremental homogenization of elasto-plastic composites

This work addresses the micro–macro modeling of composites having elasto-plastic constituents. A new model is proposed to compute the effective stress–strain relation along arbitrary loading paths. The proposed model is based on an incremental variational principle (Ortiz, M., Stainier, L., 1999. The variational formulation of viscoplastic constitutive updates. Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng. 171, 419–444) according to which the local stress–strain relation derives from a single incremental potential at each time step. The effective incremental potential of the composite is then estimated based on a linear comparison composite (LCC) with an effective behavior computed using available schemes in linear elasticity. Algorithmic elegance of the time-integration of J₂ elasto-plasticity is exploited in order to define the LCC. In particular, the elastic predictor strain is used explicitly. The method yields a homogenized yield criterion and radial return equation for each phase, as well as a homogenized plastic flow rule. The predictive capabilities of the proposed method are assessed against reference full-field finite element results for several particle-reinforced composites.     

纤维复合材料损伤过程的数值模拟

利用界面断裂力学和有限元法数值模拟纤维增强复合材料的细观损伤过程，研究各种主要破坏模式之间的相互转变和影响，指出以断裂能和混合度表示的界面性能是控制复合材料损伤过程的主要细观参数。分析了界面韧度对破坏性能的影响，探讨了基于破坏模式控制的复合材料韧度设计的新途径。     

On the homogenization of metal matrix composites using strain gradient plasticity

The homogenized response of metal matrix composites（MMC） is studied using strain gradient plasticity.The material model employed is a rate independent formulation of energetic strain gradient plasticity at the micro scale and conventional rate independent plasticity at the macro scale. Free energy inside the micro structure is included due to the elastic strains and plastic strain gradients. A unit cell containing a circular elastic fiber is analyzed under macroscopic simple shear in addition to transverse and longitudinal loading. The analyses are carried out under generalized plane strain condition. Micro-macro homogenization is performed observing the Hill-Mandel energy condition,and overall loading is considered such that the homogenized higher order terms vanish. The results highlight the intrinsic size-effects as well as the effect of fiber volume fraction on the overall response curves, plastic strain distributions and homogenized yield surfaces under different loading conditions. It is concluded that composites with smaller reinforcement size have larger initial yield surfaces and furthermore,they exhibit more kinematic hardening.     

Unified formulae of variational bounds for multiphase anisotropic elastic composites

Using the spherical and deviator decomposition of the polarization and strain tensors, we present a general algorithm for the calculation of variational bounds of dimension d for any type of anisotropic linear elastic composite as a function of the properties of the comparison body. This procedure is applied in order to obtain analytical expressions of bounds for multiphase, linear elastic composites with cubic symmetry where the geometric shapes of the inclusions are arbitrary. For the validation, it can be proved that for the isotropic particular case, the bounds coincide with those recently reported by Gibiansky and Sigmund. On the other hand, based on this general procedure some, classical bounds reported by Hashin for transversely isotropic composites, are reproduced. Numerical calculations and some comparisons with other models and experimental data are shown.     

Stochastic homogenization analysis on elastic properties of fiber reinforced composites using the equivalent inclusion method and perturbation method

This paper describes a methodology for evaluation of influence of microscopic uncertainty in material properties and geometry of a microstructure on a homogenized macroscopic elastic property of an inhomogeneous material. For the analysis of the stochastic characteristics of a homogenized elastic property, the first-order perturbation method is used. In order to analyze the influence of microscopic geometrical uncertainty, the perturbation-based equivalent inclusion method is formulated. In this paper, an analytical form of the perturbation term using the equivalent inclusion method is provided.As a numerical example, macroscopic stochastic characteristics such as an expected value or variance of the homogenized elastic tensor of a unidirectional fiber reinforced plastic, which is caused by microscopic uncertainty in material properties or geometry of a microstructure, are estimated with computing the first order perturbation term of the homogenized elastic tensor. Compared the results of the proposed method with the results of the Monte-Carlo simulation, validity, effectiveness and a limitation of the perturbation-based homogenization method is investigated.