A new class of micro–macro models for elastic–viscoplastic heterogeneous materials

Abstract The determination of the effective behavior of heterogeneous materials from the properties of the components and the microstructure constitutes a major task in the design of new materials and the modeling of their mechanical behavior. In real heterogeneous materials, the simultaneous presence of instantaneous mechanisms (elasticity) and time dependent ones (non-linear viscoplasticity) leads to a complex space–time coupling between the mechanical fields, difficult to represent in a simple and efficient way. In this work, a new self-consistent model is proposed, starting from the integral equation for a translated strain rate field. The chosen translated field is the (compatible) viscoplastic strain rate of the (fictitious) viscoplastic heterogeneous medium submitted to a uniform (unknown) boundary condition. The self-consistency condition allows to define these boundary conditions so that a relative simple and compact strain rate concentration equation is obtained. This equation is explained in terms of interactions between an inclusion and a matrix, which lead to interesting conclusions. The model is first applied to the case of two-phase composites with isotropic, linear and incompressible viscoelastic properties. In that case, an exact self-consistent solution using the Laplace–Carson transform is available. The agreement between both approaches appears quite good. Results for elastic–viscoplastic BCC polycrystals are also presented and compared with results obtained from Kroner–Weng's and Paquin et al. (Arch. Appl. Mech. 69 (1999) 14)'s model.