Sensitivity of the thermomechanical response of elastic structures to microstructural changes

This paper is focused on the analysis of the sensitivity of the thermomechanical response of a macroscopic elastic body to changes that occur at the microstructure. This problem is a key issue in material design. The sensitivity analysis relies on an accurate determination of the effective propertie...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Authors: Fachinotti, Victor Daniel, Toro, Sebastian, Sánchez, Pablo Javier, Huespe, Alfredo Edmundo
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2015
Country:Argentina
Institution:Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
Repository:CONICET Digital (CONICET)
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:ri.conicet.gov.ar:11336/38220
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/11336/38220
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Computational Homogenization of Materials
Microstructural Material Design
Response Surface Methodology
Sensitivity to Microstructural Changes
Structural Optimization
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/2.3
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/2
Description
Summary:This paper is focused on the analysis of the sensitivity of the thermomechanical response of a macroscopic elastic body to changes that occur at the microstructure. This problem is a key issue in material design. The sensitivity analysis relies on an accurate determination of the effective properties of the heterogeneous material. These effective properties are determined by computational homogenization. And their sensitivities, with respect to the parameters defining the microstructure, are then computed. For an efficient evaluation of the thermomechanical response, we propose to build response surfaces for the effective material properties. The surfaces are generated in an offline stage, by solving a series of homogenization problems at the microscale. In such a way, the fully online multiscale response analysis reduces to a standard problem at the macroscale. Thus, an important reduction in computational time is achieved, which is a crucial advantage for material design. The capability of the proposed methodology is shown in light of its application to the design of a thermally-loaded structure with variable microstructure. Considerable improvements in the structural response are achieved.