Some new extensions to multi-mechanism models for plastic and viscoplastic material behavior under small strains

Multi-mechanism models (MM models) have become an important tool for modeling complex material behavior. In particular, two-mechanism models are used. They are applied to model ratcheting in metal plasticity as well as steel behavior during phase transformations. We consider a small-deformation setting. The characteristic trait of multi-mechanism models is the additive decomposition of the inelastic (e.g., plastic or viscoplastic) strain into several parts. These parts are sometimes called mechanisms. In comparison with rheological models, the mechanisms can interact with each other. This leads to new properties and allows to describe important observable effects. Up to now, each mechanism has one kinematic internal variable. As a new feature, we develop multi-mechanism models (in series) with several kinematic variables for each mechanism as well as with several isotropic variables for each flow criterion. We describe this complex situation by three structural matrices which express the mutual relations between mechanisms, flow criteria, kinematic, and isotropic variables. The well-known Chaboche model with a unique inelastic strain and several kinematic variables represents a special case of these general multi-mechanism models. In this work, we also present a matrix-based approach for these new complex MM models. The presented models can form the basis for developing numerical algorithms for simulation and parameter identification.