Micromechanical Analysis of SiC/Al Metal Matrix Composites: Finite Element Modeling and Damage Simulation

Abstract

The influence of interface strengths and microstructures on the strength and damage of SiC particle reinforced aluminum Metal Matrix Composite (MMC) is investigated under uniaxial tensile, simple shear, biaxial tensile and combined tensile and shear loadings. An algorithm to generate automatically the microstructural models of MMCs with random distribution of particle shapes, dimensions, orientations and locations is proposed and implemented within Matlab. A damage model based on the stress triaxial indicator is developed to simulate the ductile failure of metal matrix, the other damage model based on the maximum principal stress criterion is developed to simulate the brittle failure of SiC particles, and 2D cohesive element is utilized to describe interface decohesion between matrix and particles. A series of numerical experiments are performed to study the macroscopic stress-strain relationships and microscale damage evolution in MMCs under different loading conditions.

Statistical Analyses of the Strengths of Particulate Reinforced Metal Matrix Composites (PRMMCs) Subjected to Multiple Tensile and Shear Stresses

“…Strengths of PRMMC materials are not only affected by the material microstructure, but also by the type of loading they are exerted to. Compared to the uniaxial loading, microstructure plays a more important role in determining the global material strength under multiaxial loading featured by superimposed tensile and shear stresses [23,24]. When the material strength is predicted in such circumstance, i.e., given that multiple tensile and shear stresses vary independently, then in contrast to the severe difficulty by using incremental method the problem can be tackled more easily and with a more affordable cost by adopting direct method thanks to their path-independent nature.…”

Statistical Analyses of the Strengths of Particulate Reinforced Metal Matrix Composites (PRMMCs) Subjected to Multiple Tensile and Shear Stresses

“…Strengths of PRMMC materials are not only affected by the material microstructure, but also by the type of loading they are exerted to. Compared to the uniaxial loading, microstructure plays a more important role in determining the global material strength under multiaxial loading featured by superimposed tensile and shear stresses [25,26]. When the material strength is predicted in such circumstance, i.e.…”

A micromechanical fracture analysis to investigate the effect of healing particles on the overall mechanical response of a self‐healing particulate composite

“…Microstructure-based finite element simulations have been conducted in the literature to analyse fracture and damage in particulate composite systems. [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] For examples, microstructures representing a random distribution of irregularly shaped SiC particles in an aluminum matrix were simulated using two-dimensional linear elastic approach involving stress intensity factor as the crack driving force parameter. 17,18 The effect of particle clustering was quantified, and the resulting crack paths were compared with experiments.…”