COMPLAS 2023

Viscoelastic-viscoplastic polymer composites: Development and evaluation of the two dissimilar mean field homogenization models

  • Haddad, Mohamed (Université Catholique de Louvain)
  • Doghri, Issam (Université Catholique de Louvain)

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Materials are hierarchical in nature. Their behaviors are strongly dependent to featured information at finer scales. This multiscale nature of materials poses continuing challenges in the analysis of structures across different length-scales due to the non-trivial computational cost. This study proposes a cost-efficient micromechanical modeling framework of polymer composites with viscoelastic-viscoplastic (VE-VP) constituents. Two Mean Field Homogenization models based on completely dissimilar theoretical approaches were developed under the infinitesimal strains hypothesis [1]. The first approach, the incremental-secant method, relies on a fictitious unloading of the composite at the beginning of each time step. Then, a thermoelastic-like Linear Comparison Composite (LCC) is constructed from the computed residual state directly in the time domain. The method provides naturally isotropic per-phase incremental-secant operators for isotropic VE-VP constituents. It takes into account both the first and the second statistical moment estimates of the equivalent stress micro-field. The second approach, the integral affine method, starts by linearizing the rates of viscoplastic (VP) strain and internal variables. The linearized constitutive equations are then recast in a hereditary integral format to which the Laplace-Carson (L-C) transform is applied. A thermoelastic-like LCC is built in the L-C domain, where MFH is carried out. Finally, the composite’s response in the time domain is recovered by numerical inversions of L-C transforms. The method is able to overcome the issue of heterogeneous viscous stresses encountered by time domain MFH models. The two proposed MFH formulations are able to handle non-monotonic, non-proportional and multi-axial loading histories. Their accuracies were assessed against full-field finite element (FE) results for different microstructures and loadings. The computational cost of both methods is negligible com- pared to FE analyses. Overall, the incremental-secant approach is much simpler mathematically and numerically than the integral affine formulation, its accuracy ranges from acceptable to excel- lent, and important improvements can be expected in the future by controlling the virtual unloading time increment. The incremental secant model is being expanded to the finite strain framework. This new version will further consider the behavior of polymers at large deformations, including softening, re-hardening and failur