Anisotropic effect of regular particle distribution in elastic–plastic composites: The modified tangent cluster model and numerical homogenization

Estimation of macroscopic properties of heterogeneous materials has always posed significant problems. Procedures based on numerical homogenization, although very flexible, consume a lot of time and computing power. Thus, many attempts have been made to develop analytical models that could provide robust and computationally efficient tools for this purpose. The goal of this paper is to develop a reliable analytical approach to finding the effective elastic–plastic response of metal matrix composites (MMC) and porous metals (PM) with a predefined particle or void distribution, as well as to examine the anisotropy induced by regular inhomogeneity arrangements. The proposed framework is based on the idea of Molinari & El Mouden (1996) to improve classical mean-field models of thermoelastic media by taking into account the interactions between each pair of inhomogeneities within the material volume, known as a cluster model. Both elastic and elasto-plastic regimes are examined. A new extension of the original formulation, aimed to account for the non-linear plastic regime, is performed with the use of the modified tangent linearization of the metal matrix constitutive law. The model uses the second stress moment to track the accumulated plastic strain in the matrix. In the examples, arrangements of spherical inhomogeneities in three Bravais lattices of cubic symmetry (Regular Cubic, Body-Centered Cubic and Face-Centered Cubic) are considered for two basic material scenarios: “hard-in-soft” (MMC) and “soft-in-hard” (PM). As a means of verification, the results of micromechanical mean-field modeling are compared with those of numerical homogenization performed using the Finite Element Method (FEM). In the elastic regime, a comparison is also made with several other micromechanical models dedicated to periodic composites. Within both regimes, the results obtained by the cluster model are qualitatively and quantitatively consistent with FEM calculations, especially for volume fractions of inclusions up to 40%.