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This study aims to propose a novel viscoelastic–viscoplastic combined constitutive model for glassy amorphous polymers within the framework of thermodynamics at finite strain that is capable of capturing their rate-dependent inelastic mechanical behavior in wide ranges of deformation rate and amount.

The rheology model whose viscoelastic and viscoplastic elements are connected in series is set in accordance with the multi-mechanism theory. Then, the constitutive functions are formulated on the basis of the multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient implicated by the rheology model within the framework of thermodynamics. Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) and loading/unloading/no-load tests for polycarbonate (PC) are conducted to identify the material parameters and demonstrate the capability of the proposed model.

The performance was validated in comparison with the series of the test results with different rates and amounts of deformation before unloading together. It has been confirmed that the proposed model can accommodate various material behaviors empirically observed, such as rate-dependent elasticity, elastic hysteresis, strain softening, orientation hardening and strain recovery.

This paper presents a novel rheological constitutive model in which the viscoelastic element connected in series with the viscoplastic one exclusively represents the elastic behavior, and each material response is formulated according to the multiplicatively decomposed deformation gradients. In particular, the yield strength followed by the isotropic hardening reflects the relaxation characteristics in the viscoelastic constitutive functions so that the glass transition temperature could be variant within the wide range of deformation rate. Consequently, the model enables us to properly represent the loading process up to large deformation regime followed by unloading and no-load processes.

Observation by optical microscopy and EBSP have made it clear that the trigger for the grain coarsening phenomenon of austenite stainless steel BS304S31 may be the stacking faults concentrating selectively in a thin layer lying just beneath the grain boundary. When macroscopic plastic strain reached 6 percent, selective concentration of stacking faults was observed. When it reached 20 percent, the distribution of stacking faults became uniform in each grain. After these specimens were heated, concentration of stacking faults disappeared, and grain coarsening occurred at the point with 6 percent strain, but no grain coarsening occurred at the point with 20 percent strain. In order to investigate this concentration of stacking faults, an attempt was made to analyze the deformation in each crystal by using image‐based FEM. The result suggested that there is a possibility that plastic strain concentrates in the vicinity of the grain boundary when the macroscopic plastic strain is small.

The purpose of this study is to develop a simulation method to calculate non-stationary distributions of the chemical potential of oxygen in a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) under operation.

The initial-boundary value problem was appropriately formulated and the appropriate boundary conditions were implemented so that the problem of non-stationary behavior of SOFC can be solved in accordance with actual operational and typical experimental conditions. The dependencies of the material properties on the temperature and partial pressure of oxygen were also elaborately introduced to realize actual material responses. The capability of the proposed simulation method was demonstrated under arbitrary operating conditions.

The steady state calculated with the open circuit voltage condition was conformable with the analytical solution. In addition, the transient states of the spatial distributions of potentials and currents under the voltage- and current-controlled conditions were successfully differentiated, even though they eventually became the same steady state. Furthermore, the effects of dense materials assumed for interconnects and current collectors were found to not be influential. It is thus safe to conclude that the proposed method enables us to simulate any type of transient simulations regardless of controlling conditions.

Although only uniaxial models were tested in the numerical examples in this paper, the proposed method is applicable for arbitrary shapes of SOFC cells.

The value of this paper is that adequate numerical simulations by the proposed method properly captured the electrochemical transient transport phenomena in SOFC under various operational conditions, and that the applicability was confirmed by some numerical examples.

This study aims to develop a new analysis approach devised by incorporating a gradient-enhanced microplane damage model (GeMpDM) into isogeometric analysis (IGA), which shows computational stability and capability in accurately predicting crack propagations in structures with complex geometries.

For the non-local microplane damage modeling, the maximum modified von-Mises equivalent strain among all microplanes is regularized as a representative quantity. This characterization implies that only one additional governing equation is considered, which improves computational efficiency dramatically. By combined use of GeMpDM and IGA, quasi-static and dynamic numerical analyses are conducted to demonstrate the capability in predicting crack paths of complex geometries in comparison to FEM and experimental results.

The implicit scheme with the adopted damage model shows favorable numerical stability and the numerical results exhibit appropriate convergence characteristics concerning the mesh size. The damage evolution is successfully controlled by a tension-compression damage factor. Thanks to the advanced geometric design capability of IGA, the details of crack patterns can be predicted reliably, which are somewhat difficult to be acquired by FEM. Additionally, the damage distribution obtained in the dynamic analysis is in close agreement with experimental results.

The paper originally incorporates GeMpDM into IGA. Especially, only one non-local variable is considered besides the displacement field, which improves the computational efficiency and favorable convergence characteristics within the IGA framework. Also, enjoying the geometric design ability of IGA, the proposed analysis method is capable of accurately predicting crack paths reflecting the complex geometries of target structures.