Abstract

Most of the materials produced and utilized in industry are heterogeneous on one or another spatial scale. Almost all industrially used metals have a polycrystalline structure with grains of different orientations and grain boundaries. This heterogeneous nature has a significant impact on the observed macroscopic behaviour of multi-phase materials. The work presented in the following thesis report deals with multi-scale analysis of such heterogeneous materials. While the technique of 'computational homogenization' was utilized to describe the effective thermo-mechanical properties of heterogeneous materials just by the knowledge of their microstructure and properties of each phase, the technique of 'localization' was utilized in order to evaluate the local (stress and strain) fields in the phases for given macroscopic load states, phase properties and geometries. The numerical framework of multi-scale modeling was implemented using ABAQUS and a homogenization tool developed at ACCESS e.V called 'HOMAT'. During the thermo-mechanical FE simulation of the structure at the macro-scale using ABAQUS, the critical regions were identified. A python script was developed to extract the desired field variables from the output database file (*.odb). The localization step was implemented in HOMAT in the case of thermo-elasticity. For non-linear material behaviour, the localization step was achieved by 'virtual testing' on the representative volume element (RVE) using the FE code ABAQUS. The macroscopic strains were extracted at integration point of interest. This strain state was imposed upon the RVE having periodic boundary conditions. Material models and its properties were specified for each constitutive phase of the RVE. Upon solution of the boundary value problem, microscopic stress and strain fields are analyzed. These homogenization and localization approaches were applied on two industrial cases. First application was that of a transpiration cooled multilayer plate used as liner for gas turbine combustion chamber. In this case we shall be working simultaneously at three different scales, namely: micro-scale, meso-scale and macro-scale. The homogenized properties are calculated at each of these scales and finally localization is performed on the micro-scale representative volume element of thermal barrier coating using HOMAT, while virtual testing was done in ABAQUS. The results of the two are analyzed and compared. Second application was that of U-O forming of pipeline steel. The RVE of the steel consisted of non-linear constituents, namely: ferrite matrix and pearlite inclusions. Due to the material's nonlinear behaviour we only performed localization via virtual tests on the RVE. The resulting stress and strain fields in the RVE are then analyzed.