基于均匀化理论韧性复合材料塑性极限分析

运用细观力学中的均匀化方法分析了韧性复合材料的塑性极限承载能力.从反映复合材料细观结构的代表性胞元入手,将均匀化理论运用到塑性极限分析中,计算由理想刚塑性、Mises组分材料构成的复合材料的极限承载能力.运用机动极限方法和有限元技术,最终将上述问题归结为求解一组带等式约束的非线性数学规划问题,并采用一种无搜索直接迭代算法求解.为复合材料的强度分析提供了一个有效手段.     

Micromechanical analysis of fibrous piezoelectric composites with imperfectly bonded adherence

In this work, two-phase parallel fiber-reinforced periodic piezoelectric composites are considered wherein the constituents exhibit transverse isotropy and the cells have different configurations. Mechanical imperfect contact at the interface of the piezoelectric composites is studied via linear spring model. The statement of the problem for two-phase piezoelectric composites with mechanical imperfect contact is given. The local problems are formulated by means of the asymptotic homogenization method, and their solutions are found using complex variable theory. Analytical formulae are obtained for the effective properties of the composites with spring imperfect type of contact and different rhombic cells. Using the concept of a representative volume element (RVE), a finite element model is created, which combines the angular distribution of fibers and imperfect contact conditions (spring type) between the phases. Periodic boundary conditions are applied to the RVE, so that effective material properties can be derived. The fibers are distributed in such a way that the microstructure is characterized by a rhombic cell. The presented numerical homogenization technique is validated by comparing results with theoretical approach reported in the literature. Some studies of particular cases, numerical examples, and comparisons between the two aforementioned methods with other theoretical results illustrate that the model is efficient for the analysis of composites with presence of rhombic cells and the aforementioned imperfect contact.     

A novel implementation algorithm of asymptotic homogenization for predicting the effective coefficient of thermal expansion of periodic composite materials

Asymptotic homogenization (AH) is a general method for predicting the effective coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of periodic composites. It has a rigorous mathematical foundation and can give an accurate solution if the macrostructure is large enough to comprise an infinite number of unit cells. In this paper, a novel implementation algorithm of asymptotic homogenization (NIAH) is devel-oped to calculate the effective CTE of periodic composite materials. Compared with the previous implementation of AH, there are two obvious advantages. One is its implemen-tation as simple as representative volume element (RVE). The new algorithm can be executed easily using commercial finite element analysis (FEA) software as a black box. The detailed process of the new implementation of AH has been provided. The other is that NIAH can simultaneously use more than one element type to discretize a unit cell, which can save much computational cost in predicting the CTE of a complex structure. Several examples are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new implementation. This work is expected to greatly promote the widespread use of AH in predicting the CTE of periodic composite materials.     

A parallel fast multipole BEM and its applications to large-scale analysis of 3-D fiber-reinforced composites

In this paper, an adaptive boundary element method (BEM) is presented for solving 3-D elasticity problems. The numerical scheme is accelerated by the new version of fast multipole method (FMM) and parallelized on distributed memory architectures. The resulting solver is applied to the study of representative volume element (RVE) for short fiber-reinforced composites with complex inclusion geometry. Numerical examples performed on a 32-processor cluster show that the proposed method is both accurate and efficient, and can solve problems of large size that are challenging to existing state-of-the-art domain methods.The project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10472051).The English text was polished by Yunming Chen.     

Towards gigantic RVE sizes for 3D stochastic fibrous networks

The size of representative volume element (RVE) for 3D stochastic fibrous media is investigated. A statistical RVE size determination method is applied to a specific model of random microstructure: Poisson fibers. The definition of RVE size is related to the concept of integral range. What happens in microstructures exhibiting an infinite integral range? Computational homogenization for thermal and elastic properties is performed through finite elements, over hundreds of realizations of the stochastic microstructural model, using uniform and mixed boundary conditions. The generated data undergoes statistical treatment, from which gigantic RVE sizes emerge. The method used for determining RVE sizes was found to be operational, even for pathological media, i.e., with infinite integral range, interconnected percolating porous phase and infinite contrast of properties.     

考虑内部胞元能量等效的代表体元法

具有周期性胞元的超轻质材料在制造和应用过程中,不可避免地会出现基体材料、微结构拓扑和尺寸的随机性变化.此时,评价材料的等效弹性性能需要借助基于均匀化方法(周期性边界条件)或代表体元法(周期性边界条件,均匀应力或均匀应变边界条件等)的蒙特卡洛模拟.该文首先通过算例分析和比较了不同边界条件下的数值结果,讨论了结果的尺度效应和对胞元选取的依赖性.为了提高和改善Dirichlet边界条件下的计算效率和结果,提出了一种考虑内部胞元能量等效的代表体元法.该方法能够有效削弱边界条件和胞元选取的影响,从而实现了采用较小的代表体元得到更好的结果.数值算例验证了方法在预测确定性材料和随机性材料等效模量时的有效性.     

Determination of the size of the representative volume element for random quasi-brittle composites

A representative volume element (RVE) is related to the domain size of a microstructure providing a “good” statistical representation of typical material properties. The size of an RVE for the class of quasi-brittle random heterogeneous materials under dynamic loading is one of the major questions to be answered in this paper. A new statistical strategy is thus proposed for the RVE size determination. The microstructure illustrating the methodology of the RVE size determination is a metal matrix composite with randomly distributed aligned brittle inclusions: the hydrided Zircaloy constituting nuclear claddings. For a given volume fraction of inclusions, the periodic RVE size is found in the case of overall elastic properties and of overall fracture energy. In the latter case, the term “representative” is discussed since the fracture tends to localize. A correlation factor between the “elastic” RVE and the “fracture” RVE is discussed.     

Micro/macromechanical plastic limit analyses of composite materials and structures

The load-bearing capacities of ductile composite materials and structures are studied by means of a combined micro/macromechanics approach. Firstly, on the microscopic scale, the aim is to get the macroscopic strength domains by means of the homogenization theory of micromechanics. A representative volume element (RVE) is selected to reflect the microstructures of the composite materials. By introducing the homogenization theory into the kinematic limit theorem of plastic limit analysis, an optimization format to directly calculate the limit loads of the RVE is obtained. And the macroscopic yield criterion can be determined according to the relation between macroscopic and microscopic fields. Secondly, on the macroscopic scale, by introducing the Hill's yield criterion into the kinematic limit theorem, the limit loads of orthotropic structures such as unidirectional fiber-reinforced composite structures are worked out. The finite element modeling of the kinematic limit analysis is deduced into a nonlinear mathematical programming with equality-constraint conditions that can be solved by means of a direct iterative algorithm. Finally, some examples are illustrated to show the application of the present approach. Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 19902007), the National Foundation for Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of China (No. 200025), the Fund of the Ministry of Education of China for Returned Oversea Scholars and the Basic Research Foundation of Tsinghua University.     

Micromechanics of elasto-plastic materials reinforced with ellipsoidal inclusions

The effective mechanical behavior of an elasto-plastic matrix reinforced with a random and homogeneous distribution of aligned elastic ellipsoids was obtained by the finite element simulation of a representative volume element (RVE) of the microstructure and by homogenization methods. In the latter, the composite behavior was modeled by linearization of the local behavior through the use of the tangent or secant stiffness tensors of the phases. “Quasi-exact” results for the tensile deformation were attained by averaging of the stress-strain curves coming from the numerical simulation of RVEs containing a few dozens of ellipsoids. These results were used as benchmarks to assess the accuracy of the homogenization models. The best approximations to the reference numerical results were provided by the incremental and the second-order secant methods, while the classical or first-order secant approach overestimated the composite flow stress, particularly when the composite was deformed in the longitudinal direction. The discrepancies among the homogenization models and the numerical results were assessed from the analysis of the stress and strain microfields provided by the numerical simulations, which demonstrated the dominant effect of the localization of the plastic strain in the matrix on the accuracy of the homogenization models.     

Periodization of random media and representative volume element size for linear composites

Several existing numerical studies show that the effective linear properties of random composites can be accurately estimated using small volumes subjected to periodic boundary conditions – more suitable than homogeneous strain or stress boundary conditions – providing that a sufficient number of realizations are considered. Introducing the concept of periodization of random media, this Note gives a new definition of representative volume element which leads to estimates of its minimum size in agreement with existing theoretical results. A qualitative convergence criterion for the numerical simulations is proposed and illustrated with finite element computations. To cite this article: K. Sab, B. Nedjar, C. R. Mecanique 333 (2005).     

Numerical evaluation of the thermomechanical effective properties of a functionally graded material using the homogenization method

When the stresses of the functionally graded materials (FGMs) are discussed under thermal and/or mechanical loading conditions, the different thermomechanical effective properties are needed. For the steady state thermal analyses, these properties include the Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratio, thermal expansion coefficient and thermal conductivity. For the transient analyses of the heat conduction problem, on the other hand, the density and heat capacity should be added to the aforementioned properties. The homogenization method (HM) based on the finite element method (FEM) is used as it has advantages, such as it is appropriate for estimating the effective properties of composites with a given periodic fiber distribution and complicated geometries. For a periodic composite structure, it is not necessary to study the whole structure but only a representative volume element (RVE) or a unit cell (UC). As the overall behavior of composites depends on the arrangement of the reinforcements, the corresponding UCs of two different arrangements of the fibers are analyzed; namely the square and hexagonal arrangements. It is found that the square arrangement predicts higher values of the Young’s modulus than the hexagonal one but with small difference. In order to verify the computed values of the properties, the results are compared with previous experimental measurements and results of analytical and numerical methods, and good agreement is achieved.     

An analytical and numerical approach for calculating effective material coefficients of piezoelectric fiber composites

The present work deals with the modeling of 1–3 periodic composites made of piezoceramic (PZT) fibers embedded in a soft non-piezoelectric matrix (polymer). We especially focus on predicting the effective coefficients of periodic transversely isotropic piezoelectric fiber composites using representative volume element method (unit cell method). In this paper the focus is on square arrangements of cylindrical fibers in the composite. Two ways for calculating the effective coefficients are presented, an analytical and a numerical approach. The analytical solution is based on the asymptotic homogenization method (AHM) and for the numerical approach the finite element method (FEM) is used. Special attention is given on definition of appropriate boundary conditions for the unit cell to ensure periodicity. With the two introduced methods the effective coefficients were calculated for different fiber volume fractions. Finally the results are compared and discussed.     

Novel numerical implementation of asymptotic homogenization method for periodic plate structures

The present paper develops and implements finite element formulation for the asymptotic homogenization theory for periodic composite plate and shell structures, earlier developed in  and , and thus adopts this analytical method for the analysis of periodic inhomogeneous plates and shells with more complicated periodic microstructures. It provides a benchmark test platform for evaluating various methods such as representative volume approaches to calculate effective properties. Furthermore, the new numerical implementation (Cheng et al., 2013) of asymptotic homogenization method of 2D and 3D materials with periodic microstructure is shown to be directly applicable to predict effective properties of periodic plates without any complicated mathematical derivation. The new numerical implementation is based on the rigorous mathematical foundation of the asymptotic homogenization method, and also simplicity similar to the representative volume method. It can be applied easily using commercial software as a black box. Different kinds of elements and modeling techniques available in commercial software can be used to discretize the unit cell. Several numerical examples are given to demonstrate the validity of the proposed methods.     

Multiscale modeling of heterogeneous propellants from particle packing to grain failure using a surface-based cohesive approach

In the present work,a computational framework is established for multiscale modeling and analysis ofsolid propellants.A packing algorithm,considering the ammonium perchlorate(AP) and aluminum(Al) particles asspheres or discs is developed to match the size distributionand volume fraction of solid propellants.A homogenizationtheory is employed to compute the mean stress and strainof a representative volume element(RVE).Using the meanresults,a suitable size of RVE is decided.Without considering the interfaces between particles and matrix,several numerical simulations of the relaxation of propellants are performed.The relaxation effect and the nonlinear mechanicalbehavior of propellants which are dependent on the appliedloads are discussed.A new technology named surface-basedcohesive behavior is proposed to describe the phenomenonof particle dewetting consisting of two ingredients:a damageinitiation criterion and a damage evolution law.Several examples considering contact damage behavior are computedand also nonlinear behavior caused by damaged interfaces isdiscussed in this paper.Furthermore the effects of the critical contact stress,initial contact stiffness and contact failuredistance on the damaged interface model have been studied.     

On the Size of RVE in Finite Elasticity of Random Composites

This paper presents a quantitative study of the size of representative volume element (RVE) of random matrix-inclusion composites based on a scale-dependent homogenization method. In particular, mesoscale bounds defined under essential or natural boundary conditions are computed for several nonlinear elastic, planar composites, in which the matrix and inclusions differ not only in their material parameters but also in their strain energy function representations. Various combinations of matrix and inclusion phases described by either neo-Hookean or Ogden function are examined, and these are compared to those of linear elastic types.     

A Quantitative study of minimum sizes of representative volume elements of cubic polycrystals—numerical experiments

The concept of representative volume element (RVE) plays a key role in correlating the properties of microscopically heterogeneous materials with those of their macroscopically homogenized ones. However, up to now little quantitative knowledge is available about RVE scales or sizes of various engineering materials, which have been becoming a necessity due to the rapid development of, for instance, microelectromechanical systems. A new and convenient definition of the minimum RVE size is introduced. Then more than 500 kinds of cubic polycrystalline material in the planar stress state are numerically tested. The major finding from these numerical experiments is that the RVE size for the effective shear modulus (as well as the Young's modulus) depends roughly linearly upon the anisotropy degree of the single crystal, while the effective area modulus does not. For the latter observation a theoretical proof is also given. With a maximum relative error 5%, all the materials tested (with one exception) have a minimal RVE size of 20 or less times as large as the grain size.     

周期性点阵类桁架材料等效弹性性能预测及尺度效应

比较了Dirichlet型和Neumann型边界条件下的代表体元法及均匀化方法对具有周期性结构的点阵类桁架材料等效弹性性能的预测结果．数值结果表明,Dirichlet型和Neumann型边界条件下的代表体元法所得结果随着参与模拟的单胞（微结构的最小周期）个数的增加,分别从上下界逼近均匀化方法的结果．对于一类具有特殊微结构的桁架材料,只需一个单胞即可充分逼近均匀化结果．指出产牛尺度效应的判据是,对Dirichlet型边界条件下的代表体元法,单胞公共边界处的节点支反力是否平衡;对Neumann型边界条件下的代表体元法,单胞边界间变形是否协调．最后,我们证明了对于一类均匀化方法求解中没有广义自由度的桁架材料,其均匀化结果就是各构件性能按照体积份数加权平均得到．     

Constitutive response of idealized granular media under the principal stress axes rotation

This paper is dedicated to the understanding of the phenomena, which give rise to anisotropy and non-coaxiality in granular materials. In achieving three-dimensional numerical simulation under static condition of granular media, granular element method (GEM) is adopted in this study. The method has been incorporated into the so-called mathematical homogenization theory for quasi-static equilibrium problems, which enables us to obtain the macroscopic/phenomenological inelastic deformation response of a representative volume element (RVE). To examine the anisotropic macroscopic deformation properties of the assumed RVE, which is solved by granular element method (GEM), a series of numerical experiments involving the pure rotation of the principal stress axes are carried out, and its results are discussed in relation to induced anisotropy and non-coaxiality.