Crack patterning effects in evolution of damage
- Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States)
Recent micromechanically inspired phenomenological theories using internal state variable representations of damage have been used to predict the thermomechanical behavior of microcracking solids. These models do not, in an explicit manner, account for distributions of microcracks in a Representative Volume Element (RVE) and have been successfully used only to determine the effective moduli of damaged solids. It has been demonstrated that while the distribution. and interaction of damage entities within a RVE have a minor effect on the effective moduli, they have a significant effect on the evolution of damage and failure at the macroscale. Damage evolution rates cannot, in general, be adequately described by such theories because of their inability to account for interactions between damage entities in an arbitrary distribution. In the present work, finite element solutions to two-dimensional problems with growing microcracks are obtained for both uniform and non-uniform crack arrays. Effective moduli and RVE-averaged driving forces for non-uniformly distributed interacting crack systems are calculated across a range of microcrack distribution parameters. Results are compared to existing solutions. Damage evolution is studied by allowing incremental advance under specified growth criteria of different crack systems within a RVE. Concepts for the inclusion of discrete sub-RVE length scales in the specific Helmholtz free energy and dissipation potentials are outlined. Use of multivariate distribution functions to characterize damage is discussed.
- OSTI ID:
- 175266
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-950686--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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