Microstructural modeling of heterogeneous structural materials: principles and applications

There are many problems in Solid Mechanics, Physics of Solids and Materials Science that can not been solved using conventional approaches. Besides the effective properties of non-homogeneous bodies, there is an increasing need for incorporating more physical information about small-scale mechanisms of deformation and damage into phenomenological models of plasticity and rupture of materials which are usually considered homogeneous. Cavitation, local stress or strain concentrations at small scale are essential to explain nonlinear phenomena, such as fatigue or ductile rupture, which are not understandable from the simple point of view of average stresses or strains. Precise determination or accurate estimation of local fields is the domain of micromechanics. This work treats the basic concepts of the micromechanics in a simple way, with some practical suggestion on the most commonly used modelling techniques and some applications made by the author on various nodular cast iron microstructures.