A comprehensive analysis of cermet design and thermal cyclic stability via elasto-viscoplastic crystal plasticity modeling

Ceramic-metal composites, or cermets, exhibit beneficial properties resulting in their use in many industrial applications. One challenge with cermets is mismatches in the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) values between the ceramic and metal phases that lead to residual stresses after processing, plasticity in the metal phase, internal stresses, and instability after thermal cycling. In order to make predictions of these properties to inform the design of cermets, we employ an incremental elasto-viscoplastic, self-consistent formulation to calculate the thermal, elastic, and plastic strains in two-phase polycrystalline cermet materials. This framework is extended to include temperature dependent properties, which are called implicitly within the temperature-dependent, incremental elasto-viscoplastic, self-consistent (TE-VPSC) model. Temperature-induced cooling and thermal cycling simulations are conducted using the TE-VPSC framework to study the residual stresses and plastic strains in the metal phases. Two materials are discussed in detail exhibiting stark differences based on the CTE between their ceramic and metal phases, WC/57-vol% Cu (exhibiting a pronounced CTE mismatch) and Y₂O₃/27-vol% Nb (exhibiting a negligible CTE mismatch). The model demonstrates high residual stresses in the Cu phase during processing and reverse plasticity leading to recovery of plastic strain during thermal cycling of the WC/Cu cermet. Moreover, the model demonstrates relatively low residual stresses and plasticity in Y₂O₃/Nb and a thermal stability point of 1251 °C, below which no plasticity develops in the cermet. We employ the TE-VPSC model as a design tool for cermets to systematically investigate the effects of process-induced microstructure variations (volume fraction, grain aspect ratio, and crystallographic texture are investigated) and compositional differences (19 compositions are explored) on the residual stress, degree of plasticity in the metal phase, and thermal stability point. The computational efficiency of the TE-VPSC framework makes it a desktop design tool that can be used to quantify the impact of changing composition, processing, and thermo-mechanical loading on the performance of the cermet, which can help reduce the number of time intensive and costly high temperature experiments.