A Gurson-type criterion for porous ductile solids containing arbitrary ellipsoidal voids—I: Limit-analysis of some representative cell

Gurson (1977)'s famous model of the behavior of porous ductile solids, initially developed for spherical cavities, was extended by Gologanu et al., 1993, Gologanu et al., 1994, Gologanu et al., 1997 to spheroidal, both prolate and oblate voids. The aim of this work is to further extend it to general (non-spheroidal) ellipsoidal cavities, through approximate homogenization of some representative elementary porous cell. As a first step, we perform in the present Part I a limit-analysis of such a cell, namely an ellipsoidal volume made of some rigid-ideal-plastic von Mises material and containing a confocal ellipsoidal void, loaded arbitrarily under conditions of homogeneous boundary strain rate. This analysis provides an estimate of the overall plastic dissipation based on a family of trial incompressible velocity fields recently discovered by Leblond and Gologanu (2008), satisfying conditions of homogeneous strain rate on all ellipsoids confocal with the void and the outer boundary. The asymptotic behavior of the integrand in the expression of the global plastic dissipation is studied both far from and close to the void. The results obtained suggest approximations leading to explicit approximate expressions of the overall dissipation and yield function. These expressions contain parameters the full determination of which will be the object of Part II.     

A new strategy for the numerical modeling of a weld pool

Welding processes involve high temperatures and metallurgical and mechanical consequences that must be controlled. For this purpose, numerical simulations have been developed to study the effects of the process on the final structure. During the welding process, the material undergoes thermal cycles that can generate different physical phenomena, like phase changes, microstructure changes and residual stresses and distortions. But the accurate simulation of transient temperature distributions in the part needs to carefully take account of the fluid flow in the weld pool. The aim of this paper is thus to propose a new approach for such a simulation taking account of surface tension effects (including both the “curvature effect” and the “Marangoni effect”), buoyancy forces and free surface motion.The proposed approach is validated by two numerical tests from the literature: a sloshing test and a plate subjected to a static heat source. Then, the effects of the fluid flow on temperature distributions are discussed in a hybrid laser/arc welding example.     

Crack kinking from an interface crack with initial contact between the crack lips

The authors recently theoretically studied crack kinking and opening from an initially closed crack (without friction) in some homogeneous medium. The same problem, but for an interface crack, is considered here. Comninou has shown that the asymptotic stress field prior to kinking is governed by a single, mode II stress intensity factor (SIF). Using this result, plus a homogeneity property of the problems of elastic fracture mechanics with unilateral contact envisaged, a change of scale, and two reasonable hypotheses, we establish the expression of the SIF at the tip of the small, open crack extension. It is shown that whatever the geometry of the external boundary and the crack and whatever the loading, these SIF depend solely upon the initial (mode II) SIF (in a linear way), the kink angle and Dundurs' parameters α and β. Using this result and Goldstein and Salganik's “principle of local symmetry” to predict the kink angle, one finds that it is independent of the loading but does depend upon Dundurs' parameters α and β. This contrasts with the case of an ordinary (initially closed) crack in some homogeneous medium, for which the kink angle was not only independent of the loading but an absolute constant. However, it is numerically found that the influence of the mismatch of elastic properties upon the kink angle is rather weak.     

Theoretical modelling and experimental study of the fatigue of elastomers under cyclic loadings of variable amplitude

Deviations from Miner's linear law of cumulative damage have been modelled and observed many times for the fatigue of metals, but almost no analogous studies have been performed for elastomers. Such a study is reported here.     

Hardy approximation toL ∞ functions on subsets of the circle

We consider approximation ofL ^∞ functions byH ^∞ functions on proper substs of the circle. We derive some properties of traces of Hardy classes on such subsets, and then turn to a generalization of classical extremal problems involving norm constraints on the complementary subset.