| Abstract: | The macroscopic failure of inhomogeneous media results from damage accumulation on different structural levels. During rigid loading, when given displacements of boundary points are ensured, irrespective of the body's resistance, structural-failure processes of composite materials take place in an equilibrium regime and result in the manifestation of such nonlinear-behavior effects as a descending branch on the strain diagram. the structural elements of a granular composite are homogeneous and firmly connected along the interface. Their geometry and mutual arrangement are given and do not change during deformation and failure of the medium, and the medium itself is macrohomogenous. The strength of isotropic structural elementsis estimated by comparing the second invariant of the stress tensor with its critical value. Nonfulfillment of the indicated strength criterion is associated with loss of ability to resist changes in form; at this point, the positive value of the first invariant corresponds to loss of such ability to resist and increase in volume. The deformation and structural failure of the medium are investigated as a single process that can be described under quasi-static loading by a boundary problem consisting of a closed system of Eqs. (1) and (2) and boundary conditions providing for a macrohomogeneous strain state. A principal feature of the boundary problem under consideration is the possibility of considering in constitutive relationships the states of the inhomogeneous medium, which correspond to partial or complete loss of bearing capacity of the structural elements. The random structural strength constants correspond to three-parameter Weibull distribution (6). The representative volume of a granular composite, which fills a domain in the form of a cube, is modeled by a set of istropic elastobrittle strain diagrams containing a descending branch are obtained as a result of the mathematical modeling of deformation processes and structural failure to realized a representative volume containing 384 structural elements with different strength and similar elastic constants.Presented at the Ninth International Conference on the Mechanics of Composite Materials, Riga, October, 1995.Perm'State Mechanical University, Russia. Translated From Mekhanika Kompozitnykh Materialov, Vol. 32, No. 6, pp. 808–817, November–December, 1996. |
