Elastoplastic Modeling of Metal Matrix Composites Containing Randomly Located and Oriented Spheroidal Particles

Abstract

Micromechanics-based effective elastic and plastic formulations of metal matrix composites (MMCs) containing randomly located and randomly oriented particles are developed. The averaging process over all orientations upon three elastic governing equations for aligned particle-reinforced MMCs is performed to obtain the explicit formulation of effective elastic stiffness of MMCs with randomly oriented particles. The effects of volume fraction of particles and particle shape on the overall elastic constants are studied. Comparisons with the Hashin-Shtrikman bounds and Ponte Castaneda-Willis bounds show that the present effective elastic formulation does not violate the variational bounds. Good agreement with experimental elastic stiffness data is also illustrated. Furthermore, the orientational averaging procedure is employed to derive the overall elastoplastic yield function for the MMCs. Elastoplastic constitutive relations for the composites are constructed on the basis of the derived composite yield function. The stress-strain responses of MMCs under the axisymmetric loading are also investigated in detail. Finally, elastoplastic comparisons with the experimental data for SiCp/Al composites are performed to illustrate the capability of the proposed formulation.