Experimental characterization and mechanical behaviour modelling of molybdenum–titanium carbide composite for high temperature applications

Simulations of the elastic–viscoplastic behaviour of ceramic–metal composite, over the temperature range 298–993 K, are performed on realistic aggregates built up from electron back scatter diffraction methods. Physical based constitutive models are developed in order to characterize the deformation behaviour of body centered cubic (bcc) metal and face centered cubic (fcc) ceramic under various temperatures. While the ceramic keeps elastic, the viscoplastic behaviour of the metal part is described with a dislocation - based model, implemented in the finite element code ABAQUS, in order to compute local strain and stress fields during compressive tests. It is shown that the adopted constitutive laws are able to give back local complex experimental evidence on weak points of the microstructure.