An Approach for Micromechanical Modelling of Damage Mechanisms

In the framework of numerical simulation of damaged materials, softening behaviour represents an important topic. Thereby, the decrease of stiffness is mainly caused by the evolution of microvoids. In contrast to the established phenomenological damage approaches, the explicit consideration of effects on the micro scale can lead to an improved approximation quality. In this work, we discuss an approach to describe microstructural evolution. Based on a two phase micro model representing the macroscopical material behaviour, the structural evolution on the micro scale will be modelled based on configurational forces. Besides some theoretical basics on configurational forces at two phase systems and the definition of suitable evolution laws, we present an application of this approach on void growth process in rubberlike material. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)