Micromechanical analysis of thermoelastoplastic behavior of metal matrix composites

A micromechanics model based on the variational asymptotic method for periodic composites was developed using an incremental formulation to capture the coupled thermoelasto-plastic behavior of metal matrix composites. Taking advantage of the small size of the microstructure, a variational statement of the unit cell through an asymptotic expansion of an functional of energy change was formulated to calculate the effective instantaneous tangential elasto-plastic matrix and thermal stress matrix of the composite materials. An iterative homogenization and localization technique was proposed to simulate the nonlinear thermo-elasto-plastic behavior of metal matrix composites. This model was implemented using the finite element method. For validation, a numerical example was examined to demonstrate the application and accuracy of this theory and companion code. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.