Numerical simulation of thermal-mechanical induced fracture with discretized virtual internal bond

The thermal-mechanical coupled discretized virtual internal bond (DVIB) is developed to simulate the fracture problem subjected to the thermal-mechanical field. Different from the conventional lattice model, DVIB considers material to consist of bond cells. Each bond cell can take any geometry with any number of bonds. To enable DVIB to simulate the thermal conduction process, each bond is taken as a thermal channel. The micro bond thermal conductivity and heat capacity coefficient are calibrated based on a volume equivalence approach, which makes it unnecessary to consider the geometry details of cell. The relationship between the macro and the micro thermal parameters are derived. The thermal effect is incorporated into the mechanical process by means of bond deformation decomposition. Through the bond potential, which characterizes the interaction between particles, the thermal effect on the mechanical response of material is accounted. The simulation results demonstrate that this method can simulate the fracture behaviors of material subjected to the thermal-mechanical field with very high accuracy. Because both the thermal and the mechanical field simulation are based on the common discrete lattice structure in DVIB, it is highly efficient and straightforward to deal with the thermal-mechanical induced fracture problem. In addition, the thermal parameter calibration method makes the DVIB quite flexible. The perspective this method should be inspiring.