1,549 research outputs found
Microstructural topology effects on the onset of ductile failure in multi-phase materials - a systematic computational approach
Multi-phase materials are key for modern engineering applications. They are
generally characterized by a high strength and ductility. Many of these
materials fail by ductile fracture of the, generally softer, matrix phase. In
this work we systematically study the influence of the arrangement of the
phases by correlating the microstructure of a two-phase material to the onset
of ductile failure. A single topological feature is identified in which
critical levels of damage are consistently indicated. It consists of a small
region of the matrix phase with particles of the hard phase on both sides in a
direction that depends on the applied deformation. Due to this configuration, a
large tensile hydrostatic stress and plastic strain is observed inside the
matrix, indicating high damage. This topological feature has, to some extent,
been recognized before for certain multi-phase materials. This study however
provides insight in the mechanics involved, including the influence of the
loading conditions and the arrangement of the phases in the material
surrounding the feature. Furthermore, a parameter study is performed to explore
the influence of volume fraction and hardness of the inclusion phase. For the
same macroscopic hardening response, the ductility is predicted to increase if
the volume fraction of the hard phase increases while at the same time its
hardness decreases
Fracture initiation in multi-phase materials: a systematic three-dimensional approach using a FFT-based solver
This paper studies a two-phase material with a microstructure composed of a
hard brittle reinforcement phase embedded in a soft ductile matrix. It
addresses the full three-dimensional nature of the microstructure and
macroscopic deformation. A large ensemble of periodic microstructures is used,
whereby the individual grains of the two phases are modeled using equi-sized
cubes. A particular solution strategy relying on the Fast Fourier Transform is
adopted, which has a high computational efficiency both in terms of speed and
memory footprint, thus enabling a statistically meaningful analysis. This
solution method naturally accompanies the regular microstructural model, as the
Fast Fourier Transform relies on a regular grid.
Using the many considered microstructures as an ensemble, the average
arrangement of phases around fracture initiation sites is objectively
identified by the correlation between microstructure and fracture initiation --
in three dimensions. The results show that fracture initiates where regions of
the hard phase are interrupted by bands of the soft phase that are aligned with
the direction of maximum shear. In such regions, the hard phase is arranged
such that the area of the phase boundary perpendicular to the principal strain
direction is maximum, leading to high hydrostatic tensile stresses, while not
interrupting the shear bands that form in the soft phase. The local
incompatibility that is present around the shear bands is responsible for a
high plastic strain. By comparing the response to a two-dimensional
microstructure it is observed that the response is qualitatively similar (both
macroscopically and microscopically). One important difference is that the
local strain partitioning between the two phases is over-predicted by the
two-dimensional microstructure, leading to an overestimation of damage
Improving the initial guess for the Newton-Raphson protocol in time-dependent simulations
A general linearisation procedure for the consistent tangent of a
small-strain visco-plastic material model is presented in this note. The
procedure is based on multi-variable linearisation around a so-called
'reference state'. In particular, the linerarisation of the time integration
scheme is found to yield an extra term compared to classical expressions, which
only appears because the material response is time-dependent. It has the effect
of yielding a very accurate initial guess for the Newton-Raphson protocol based
on the ongoing viscous flow. It is shown, using a modern variational FFT-based
solver, that the extra term reduces both the CPU time and the number of
Newton-Raphson iterations by around a factor two.Comment: Journal of Computational Physics, 202
Star formation environments and the distribution of binary separations
We have carried out K-band speckle observations of a sample of 114 X-ray
selected weak-line T Tauri stars in the nearby Scorpius-Centaurus OB
association. We find that for binary T Tauri stars closely associated to the
early type stars in Upper Scorpius, the youngest subgroup of the OB
association, the peak in the distribution of binary separations is at 90 A.U.
For binary T Tauri stars located in the direction of an older subgroup, but not
closely associated to early type stars, the peak in the distribution is at 215
A.U. A Kolmogorov-Smirnov test indicates that the two binary populations do not
result from the same distibution at a significance level of 98%. Apparently,
the same physical conditions which facilitate the formation of massive stars
also facilitate the formation of closer binaries among low-mass stars, whereas
physical conditions unfavorable for the formation of massive stars lead to the
formation of wider binaries among low-mass stars. The outcome of the binary
formation process might be related to the internal turbulence and the angular
momentum of molecular cloud cores, magnetic field, the initial temperature
within a cloud, or - most likely - a combination of all of these. We conclude
that the distribution of binary separations is not a universal quantity, and
that the broad distribution of binary separations observed among main-sequence
stars can be explained by a superposition of more peaked binary distributions
resulting from various star forming environments. The overall binary frequency
among pre-main-sequence stars in individual star forming regions is not
necessarily higher than among main-sequence stars.Comment: 7 pages, Latex, 4 Postscript figures; also available at
http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/brandner/pubs/pubs.html ; accepted for
publication in ApJ Letter
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