Universitätsbibliothek
Weimar Open Access

Torsten Luther, Carsten Könke

• The design and application of high performance materials demands extensive knowledge of the materials damage behavior, which significantly depends on the meso- and microstructural complexity. Numerical simulations of crack growth on multiple length scales are promising tools to understand the damage phenomena in complex materials. In polycrystalline materials it has been observed that the grainThe design and application of high performance materials demands extensive knowledge of the materials damage behavior, which significantly depends on the meso- and microstructural complexity. Numerical simulations of crack growth on multiple length scales are promising tools to understand the damage phenomena in complex materials. In polycrystalline materials it has been observed that the grain boundary decohesion is one important mechanism that leads to micro crack initiation. Following this observation the paper presents a polycrystal mesoscale model consisting of grains with orthotropic material behavior and cohesive interfaces along grain boundaries, which is able to reproduce the crack initiation and propagation along grain boundaries in polycrystalline materials. With respect to the importance of modeling the geometry of the grain structure an advanced Voronoi algorithm is proposed to generate realistic polycrystalline material structures based on measured grain size distribution. The polycrystal model is applied to investigate the crack initiation and propagation in statically loaded representative volume elements of aluminum on the mesoscale without the necessity of initial damage definition. Future research work is planned to include the mesoscale model into a multiscale model for the damage analysis in polycrystalline materials.…