Effective elastoplastic behavior of metal matrix composites containing randomly located aligned spheroidal Inhomogeneities. Part II: applications

Based on the proposed formulation in Part I of this sequel (Ju, J.W., Sun, L.Z., Int. J. Solids Struct. 38, 183-201), effective elastoplastic constitutive relations are implemented in this article for metal matrix composites (MMCs) with randomly located and unidirectionally aligned spheroidal particles. First, we investigate the uniaxial elastoplastic stress-strain behavior of MMCs. In particular, we perform comparisons among the theoretical uniaxial stress-strain predictions, existing finite element results and experimental data for MMCs to illustrate the capability of the proposed method. Furthermore, the effect of stress triaxiality is discussed under either the purely hydrostatic or axisymmetric loading on the overall elastoplastic behavior of composites. The proposed initial effective yield surfaces for composites are demonstrated and compared with those of the experimental data. As a special case of the incompressible ductile material containing aligned spheroidal voids, the initial effective yield criterion is studied and compared with that of mathematical upper bound. Finally, viscoplastic extension is briefly presented. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.