FE approach of the plasticity of 3D polycrystals subjected to cyclic loading

Abstract

The Finite Elements method is used to compute the volume average responses of 3D multicrystals in elasticity and elastoplasticity: the cubic domain of computation is divided into Voronoi polyhedra that constitute the grains and discretized either regularly into n*n*n brick elements or freely into tetrahedral elements. As the apparent (volume average) properties of multicrystals differ from one to the other, all the more as there are few grains, the determination of the effective properties of the polycrystalline medium can be completed by ensemble average over random multicrystals of a same size. After the analysis of the validity of ergodicity in the case of simple uniaxial tests with mixed boundary conditions, the configurations of modelling which are appropriate for investigations on elastoplasticity are determined and applications are performed for cases of cyclic loading.