CONSTITUTIVE MODELING OF CRYSTALLINE MATERIALS WITH TEXTURE CHARACTERISTICS

The analysis of the response of complex structural systems requires the description of the material constitutive relations by means of an appropriate material model. The level of abstraction of such model may strongly affect the quality of the prognosis of the whole structure. In context to this fact, it is necessary to describe the material in a convenient sense as exact but as simple as possible. All material phenomena of crystalline materials e.g. steel, affecting the behavior of the structure, rely on physical effects which are interacting over spatial scales from subatomic to macroscopic range. Nevertheless, if the material is microscopically heterogenic, it might be appropriate to use phenomenological models for the purpose of civil engineering. Although constantly applied, these models are insufficient for steel materials with microscopic characteristics such as texture, typically occurring in hot rolled steel members or heat affected zones of welded joints. Hence, texture is manifested in crystalline materials as a regular crystallographic structure and crystallite orientation, influencing macroscopic material properties. The analysis of structural response of material with texture (e.g. rolled steel or heat affected zone of a welded joint) obliges the extension of the phenomenological material description of macroscopic scale by means of microscopic information. This paper introduces an enrichment approach for material models based on a hierarchical multiscale methodology. This has been done by describing the grain texture on a mesoscopic scale and coupling it with macroscopic constitutive relations by means of homogenization. Due to a variety of available homogenization methods, the question of an assessment of coupling quality arises. The applicability of the method and the effect of the coupling method on the reliability of the response are presented on an example.