Modeling rate-independent hysteresis in large deformations of preconditioned soft tissues

A phenomenological model is proposed for characterizing rate-independent hysteresis exhibited by preconditioned soft tissues. The preconditioned tissue is modeled as an isotropic composite of a hyperelastic component and a dissipative (inelastic) component. Specifically, the constitutive equations are hyperelastic in the sense that the stress is determined by derivatives of a strain energy function. Inelasticity of the dissipative component is controlled by a yield function with different functional forms for the hardening variable during deformation loading and unloading. The constitutive equations proposed in this paper are simple. In particular, they depend on only seven material constants: three controlling the response of the elastic component and the remainder controlling the response of the dissipative component. More importantly, the material constants can be determined to match rather general loading and unloading behavior. It is observed that the hysteretic response of the model compares well with experimental data for passive uniaxial loading/unloading of Manduca muscle. Moreover, the present model treats partial loading and reloading of preconditioned tissue as elastic–plastic response, which is different from the treatment of pseudo-elastic models used in the literature.     

Gradient plasticity with the tangential-subloading surface model and the prediction of shear-band thickness of granular materials

An extended gradient elastoplastic constitutive equation is formulated, which is capable of describing the plastic strain rate due to the rate of stress inside the yield surface and the inelastic strain rate due to the stress rate component tangential to the subloading surface by incorporating the tangential-subloading surface model. Based on the extended constitutive equation, the post-localization analysis of granular materials is performed to predict the shear-band thickness. It is revealed that the shear-band thickness is almost determined by the gradient coefficient characterizing the inhomogeneity of deformation, although the stress–strain curve is strongly dependent on material properties.     

Micromechanical quantification of elastic,twinning, and slip strain partitioning exhibited by polycrystalline,monoclinic nickel–titanium during large uniaxial deformations measured via in-situ neutron diffraction

We draw upon existing knowledge of twinning and slip mechanics to develop a diffraction analysis model that allows for empirical quantification of individual deformation mechanisms to the macroscopic behaviors of low symmetry and phase transforming crystalline solids. These methods are applied in studying elasticity, accommodation twinning, deformation twinning, and slip through neutron diffraction data of tensile and compressive deformations of monoclinic NiTi to ~18% true strain. A deeper understanding of tension–compression asymmetry in NiTi is gained by connecting crystallographic calculations of polycrystalline twinning strains with in situ diffraction measurements. Our analyses culminate in empirical, micromechanical quantification of individual elastic, accommodation twinning, deformation twinning, and slip contributions to the total macroscopic stress–strain response of a monoclinic material subjected to large deformations. From these results, we find that 20–40% of the total plastic response at high strains is due to deformation twinning and 60–80% due to slip.     

Applied creep theory for bodies with anisotropy due to plastic prestrain

Plastic strains in structures at the stages of manufacturing, testing, and approaching the operation regime cause anisotropic variations in the mechanical properties of materials, including creep strength. We consider the following special but practically important class of loading processes for originally isotropic materials: a simple active plastic strain is followed by a long-term steady-state loading within the elastic limits. To describe the second stage, we present the creep strain deviator in the form of an additive orthogonal decomposition in the directions of the repeated loading and the vector anisotropy. The coefficients in the decomposition are material functions of time, of the intensities of the preliminary and repeated loadings, and of the angle between the directions of these loadings. We obtain conditions on the material functions under which, at any given time instant, there is a one-to-one continuous correspondence between the stress and strain tensors for the model proposed and the boundary-value problem in the generalized statement has a unique solution; we also prove the convergence of the iteration method of elastic solutions used to find this unique solution. The model is identified according to the creep diagrams (under steady-state stresses of different values) determined for the material in the original state and after the plastic prestrain at an angle (zero, extended, and intermediate) to the direction of the repeated loading. We show that our results are in good agreement with the results available in the literature concerning experiments in this class of processes for stainless steel at high temperature. We propose an engineering version of the theory in which only the experimental data for uniaxial tension are used. We discuss the versions of the model for the cases in which the plastic preloading is cyclic (one-dimensional or circular) and the repeated loading is unsteady.     

Role of elasticity in elastic–plastic fracture: Analytical bi-linear crack-tip fields and finite element analysis

A solution for Model-I plane strain crack tip fields in a bi-linear elastic–plastic material is presented. The elastic–plastic Poisson's ratio is introduced to characterize the influence of elastic deformation on the near tip constraint. Attention is focused on the distribution of elastic/plastic strain energy in the sensitive region of the forward sector ahead of a crack tip. The present study shows that the elastic strain energy can be higher than the plastic strain energy in this sensitive sector while large amount of the plastic strain energy develops outside this sector around the crack tip. The effect of elastic deformation in this sensitive region on the structure of crack-tip fields is considerable and the assumption in some important solutions for crack-tip fields reported in literature that the elastic deformation is small and can be ignored is therefore not physically reasonable. Besides, finite element analysis is carried out to validate the analytical solution and good agreement between them is found. It is seen that the present solution with T-stress can properly describe the crack-tip fields under various constraints for different specimens and an analytical relation is established between the critical value of J-integral, J_c, and T-stress for elastic–plastic fracture.     

Analytical springback model for lightweight hexagonal close-packed sheet metal

Experiments have shown that magnesium alloy sheet a common hexagonal close-packed metal, exhibits mechanical behavior unlike that of sheets made of cubic metals (X.Y. Lou et al., 2007, Int. J. Plasticity, 24, 44). The unique stress–strain response includes a strong asymmetry in the initial yield and subsequent plastic hardening. In other words, the stress–strain curves in tension and compression are significantly different. A proper representation of the constitutive relationships is crucial for the accurate evaluation of springback, which occurs due to the residual moment distribution through the sheet thickness after bending. In this paper, we propose an analytical model for asymmetric elasto-plastic bending under tension followed by elastic unloading in order to evaluate the bending moment, which is equivalent to the springback amount. To simplify the calculations, the experimentally measured stress–strain curve of the magnesium alloy sheet was approximated with discrete linear hardening in each deformation region, and the material properties were characterized according to several simplifying assumptions. The bending moment was calculated analytically using the approximate asymmetric stress–strain relationship up to the prescribed curvature corresponding to the radius of the tool in sheet metal forming operations. A numerical example showed an unusual springback increase, even with an increase in the applied force; this is an unexpected result for conventional symmetric materials. We also compared the calculated springback amounts with the results of physical measurements. This showed that the proposed model predicts the main trends of the springback in magnesium alloy sheets reasonably well considering the simplicity of the analytical approach.     

Elastic-viscoplastic notch correction methods

Neuber’s type methods are dedicated to obtain fast estimation of elastic–plastic state at stress concentrations from elastic results. To deal with complex loadings, empirical rules are necessary and do not always give satisfying results. In this context, we propose a new approach based on homogenization techniques. The plastic zone is viewed as an inclusion in an infinite elastic matrix which results in relationships between the elastic solution of the problem and estimated stress–strain state at the notch tip. Three versions of the notch correction method are successively introduced, a linear one which directly uses Eshelby’s solution to compute stresses and strains at the notch, a non-linear method that takes into account plastic accommodation through a β$\beta$-rule correction and, finally, the extended method that is based on the transformation field analysis methods. All the notch correction methods need calibration of localization tensors. The corresponding procedures are proposed and analyzed. The methods are compared on different simulation cases of notched specimens and the predictive capabilities of the extended method in situations where plasticity is not confined at the notch are demonstrated. Finally, the case of a complex multiperforated specimen is addressed.     

Exact solution of rotating FGM shaft problem in the elastoplastic state of stress

Plane strain analytical solutions to estimate purely elastic, partially plastic and fully plastic deformation behavior of rotating functionally graded (FGM) hollow shafts are presented. The modulus of elasticity of the shaft material is assumed to vary nonlinearly in the radial direction. Tresca’s yield criterion and its associated flow rule are used to formulate three different plastic regions for an ideal plastic material. By considering different material compositions as well as a wide range of bore radii, it is demonstrated in this article that both the elastic and the elastoplastic responses of a rotating FGM hollow shaft are affected significantly by the material nonhomogeneity.     

U–6Nb shear stress relaxation in compression waves (IJP 585-AV)

When uranium alloyed with 6-wt% niobium (U–6Nb) is rapidly compressed in uniaxial strain experiments, shear stress is observed to relax with a characteristic time of 30 ± 7 ns. In shock wave experiments, this relaxation inhibits the development of an elastic precursor commonly seen in other materials. When U–6Nb is cold-rolled to pre-twin and significantly increase the density of dislocations in the material, stress relaxation effects are diminished suggesting that twinning causes relaxation in the un-worked material. Separate ramp wave compression experiments produce effects that agree with those observed in shock-loading experiments. A phenomenological model is introduced that allows accurate simulation of all experiments. Estimates of residual shear stress after relaxation are obtained.     

A plasticity model for pressure-dependent anisotropic cellular solids

The initial and subsequent yield surfaces for an anisotropic and pressure-dependent 2D stochastic cellular material, which represents solid foams, are investigated under biaxial loading using finite element analysis. Scalar measures of stress and strain, namely characteristic stress and characteristic strain, are used to describe the constitutive response of cellular material along various stress paths. The coupling between loading path and strain hardening is then investigated in characteristic stress–strain domain. The nature of the flow rule that best describes the plastic flow of cellular solid is also investigated. An incremental plasticity framework is proposed to describe the pressure-dependent plastic flow of 2D stochastic cellular solids. The proposed plasticity framework adopts the anisotropic and pressure-dependent yield function recently introduced by Alkhader and Vural [Alkhader M., Vural M., 2009a. An energy-based anisotropic yield criterion for cellular solids and validation by biaxial FE simulations. J. Mech. Phys. Solids 57(5), 871–890]. It has been shown that the proposed yield function can be simply calibrated using elastic constants and flow stresses under uniaixal loading. Comparison of stress fields predicted by continuum plasticity model to the ones obtained from FE analysis shows good agreement for the range of loading paths and strains investigated.     

Plasticity,internal structure and phase field model

The model presented here is based on the assumption that the plastic phase is due to a variation of the strain generating a dislocation migration, which in turn implies a different material response. That is, the transition from elastic to plastic behavior is related with two different internal or mesoscopic structures. So, within the Landau theory on phase transitions, and via the notion of order parameter, we suggest a model for a hardening plasticity by a second order phase transition, able to describe the elastic–plastic transformation. The differential problem related with this new variable will be represented by the Ginzburg–Landau equation. The model is supplemented by a differential constitutive equation among the strain, the stress, and the order parameter. By this system, we are able to obtain the classical behavior of hardening plastic phase diagrams.     

A nonlocal strain gradient plasticity theory for finite deformations

Strain gradient plasticity for finite deformations is addressed within the framework of nonlocal continuum thermodynamics, featured by the concepts of (nonlocality) energy residual and globally simple material. The plastic strain gradient is assumed to be physically meaningful in the domain of particle isoclinic configurations (with the director vector triad constant both in space and time), whereas the objective notion of corotational gradient makes it possible to compute the plastic strain gradient in any domain of particle intermediate configurations. A phenomenological elastic–plastic constitutive model is presented, with mixed kinematic/isotropic hardening laws in the form of PDEs and related higher order boundary conditions (including those associated with the moving elastic/plastic boundary). Two fourth-order projection tensor operators, functions of the elastic and plastic strain states, are shown to relate the skew-symmetric parts of the Mandel stress and back stress to the related symmetric parts. Consistent with the thermodynamic restrictions therein derived, the flow laws for rate-independent associative plasticity are formulated in a six-dimensional tensor space in terms of symmetric parts of Mandel stresses and related work-conjugate generalized plastic strain rates. A simple shear problem application is presented for illustrative purposes.     

Determination of the effective elastic–plastic response of metal–ceramic composites

The mechanical response of metal–ceramic composites is analysed through a homogenization model accounting for the mechanical behaviour of the constituent materials. In order to achieve this purpose a nonlinear homogenization method based on the phase field approach has been suitably implemented into a numerical code. A prescribed homogenized strain state is applied to a unit volume element of a metal–ceramic composite with proportional loading in which all components of the strain tensor are proportional to one scalar parameter. The mechanical response of the material has been modeled by considering a von Mises plasticity model for the metal phase and a Drucker–Prager associative elastic–plastic material model for the ceramic phase. A two stages plasticity has been obtained in which inelastic strain develops in the metal phase followed by a fully plastic response. A comparison with a finite element model of the stress–strain response of an axisymmetric unit cell has been carried out with the purpose to validate the homogenization based modeling presented in the paper. Plastic parameters of a Drucker–Prager yield surface for the homogenized composite have been calculated at different materials compositions. Associative Drucker–Prager plasticity has been found to be accurate for high ceramic content.     

A unified expression of elastic–plastic notch stress–strain calculation in bodies subjected to multiaxial cyclic loading

In this paper, a simplified thermodynamics analysis of cyclic plastic deformation is performed in order to establish an energy transition relation for describing the elastic–plastic stress and strain behavior of the notch-tip material element in bodies subjected to multiaxial cyclic loads. Based on the thermodynamics analysis, it is deduced that in the case of elastic–plastic deformation, Neuber’s rule inevitably overestimates the actual stress and strain at the notch tip, while the equivalent strain energy density (ESED) method tends to underestimate the actual notch-tip stress and strain. According to the actual energy conversion occurring in the notch-tip material element during cyclic plastic deformation, a unified expression for estimating the elastic–plastic notch stress–strain responses in bodies subjected to multiaxial cyclic loads is developed, of which Neuber’s rule and the ESED method become two particular cases, i.e. upper and lower bound limits of the notch stress and strain estimations. This expression is verified experimentally under both proportional and non-proportional multiaxial cyclic loads and a good agreement between the calculated and the measured notch strains has been achieved. It is also shown that in the case of multiaxial cyclic loading, the unified expression distinctly improves the accuracy of the notch-tip stress–strain estimations in comparison with Neuber’s rule and the ESED method. The unified expression of the notch stress–strain calculation developed in this paper can thus provide a more logical approximate approach for estimating the elastic–plastic notch-tip stress and strain responses of components subjected to lengthy multiaxial cyclic loading histories for local strain approach-based fatigue-crack-initiation life prediction.     

A coupled elastoplastic-damage constitutive model with Lode angle dependent failure criterion

A coupled elastoplastic-damage constitutive model with Lode angle dependent failure criterion for high strain and ballistic applications is presented. A Lode angle dependent function is added to the equivalent plastic strain to failure definition of the Johnson–Cook failure criterion. The weakening in the elastic law and in the Johnson–Cook-like constitutive relation implicitly introduces the Lode angle dependency in the elastoplastic behaviour. The material model is calibrated for precipitation hardened Inconel 718 nickel-base superalloy. The combination of a Lode angle dependent failure criterion with weakened constitutive equations is proven to predict fracture patterns of the mechanical tests performed and provide reliable results. Additionally, the mesh size dependency on the prediction of the fracture patterns was studied, showing that was crucial to predict such patterns.     

Debonding failure and size effects in micro-reinforced composites

Failure in micro-reinforced composites is investigated numerically using the strain-gradient plasticity theory of Gudmundson [Gudmundson, P., 2004. A unified treatment of strain gradient plasticity. Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids 52 (6) 1379–1406] in a plane strain visco-plastic formulation. Bi-axially loaded unit cells are used and failure is modeled using a cohesive zone at the reinforcement interface. During debonding a sudden stress drop in the overall average stress–strain response is observed. Adaptive higher-order boundary conditions are imposed at the reinforcement interface for realistically modeling the restrictions on moving dislocations as debonding occurs. It is found that the influence of the imposed higher-order boundary conditions at the interface is minor. If strain-gradient effects are accounted for a void with a smooth shape develops at the reinforcement interface while a smaller void having a sharp tip nucleates if strain-gradient effects are excluded. Using orthogonalization of the plastic strain gradient with three corresponding material length scales it is found that, the first length scale dominates the evaluated overall average stress–strain response, the second one only has a small effect and the third one has an intermediate effect. Finally, studies of reinforcement having elliptical cross-sections show rather significant gradients of stress which is not seen for the corresponding circular cross-sections. Also, an increased drop in the overall load carrying capacity is observed for cross-sections elongated perpendicular to the principal tensile direction compared to the corresponding circular cross-sections.     

Suppressed plastic deformation at blunt crack-tips due to strain gradient effects

Large deformation gradients occur near a crack-tip and strain gradient dependent crack-tip deformation and stress fields are expected. Nevertheless, for material length scales much smaller than the scale of the deformation gradients, a conventional elastic–plastic solution is obtained. On the other hand, for significant large material length scales, a conventional elastic solution is obtained. This transition in behaviour is investigated based on a finite strain version of the Fleck–Hutchinson strain gradient plasticity model from 2001. The predictions show that for a wide range of material parameters, the transition from the conventional elastic–plastic to the elastic solution occurs for length scales ranging from 0.001 times the size of the plastic zone to a length scale of the same order of magnitude as the plastic zone.     

不同应变率下聚乙烯材料的压缩力学性能

为了研究聚乙烯材料在不同应变率下的压缩力学性能,通过准静态实验和动态实验获得聚乙烯材料不同应变率下的应力应变曲线,分析发现:聚乙烯的弹性模量和屈服强度随应变率增大而增大,具有明显的黏弹塑性;聚乙烯材料进入塑性阶段,其应力应变曲线在不同应变率下具有相近的变化趋势,即塑性切向模量近似相同。根据聚乙烯材料的压缩力学性能,建立了弹性区、屈服点和塑性区的分段本构模型。该模型的屈服点和塑性段与实验结果吻合较好,由于弹性段采用线弹性模型,与实验结果存在一定偏差,可近似描述材料的弹性行为。     

Giant faults in deformed Gum Metal

We have experimentally characterized and theoretically described plastic flow localization in Gum Metal, a special titanium alloy with high strength, low Young’s modulus, excellent cold workability and low resistance to shear in certain crystallographic planes. The electron transmission microscopy experiments demonstrate that plastic flow is localized in giant faults – macroscopic planar defects carrying very large plastic strains (thousand percent or more) – in deformed Gum Metal. Also, regions with highly inhomogeneous elastic strains and varying crystal lattice orientation are experimentally observed in the vicinity of giant faults. A theoretical model is suggested describing the generation of giant faults as a process resulting from generation and evolution of nanodisturbances (nanoscopic planar areas of local shear) in Gum Metal. It is shown that giant faults can effectively nucleate and evolve in Gum Metal, and their intersection with grain boundaries produces both elastic strain accumulation and inhomogeneities of crystal lattice orientation. This behavior of giant faults is expected to be essential for excellent cold ductility of high-strength Gum Metal.