MODELING OF HETEROGENEOUS MATERIALS USING A MESOSCOPIC SCALE FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS

This work presents a two-dimensional meso-scale model that captures some features of the mechanical behavior of heterogeneous material. First, it intends to describe the behavior of a metallic material using Von Mises elasto-plastic model with linear strain hardening. In rupture stages, some microcracks are created. Therefore, it is adopted a modified cohesive fracture model in order to simulate the cracking process until complete failure. The Representative Volume Element consists of elastic inclusions or cavities idealized as circular shapes placed into the metallic matrix in order to investigate the behavior of the RVEs. All simulations have been performed by employing the computational homogenization under the plane stress assumption in small strain regime. The average stress is obtained by imposing the macro-strain over the RVE and subsequently solving the microscopic initial boundary value problem for the defined boundary condition assumed. In summary, the proposed homogenization-based model is found to be a suitable tool for the identification of macroscopic constitutive response of this kind of material.