Porous materials with two populations of voids under internal pressure: II. Growth and coalescence of voids

This study is devoted to the mechanical behaviour of polycrystalline materials with two populations of voids, small spherical voids located inside the grains and larger spheroidal voids located at the grain boundaries. In part I of the work, instantaneous effective stress–strain relations were derived for fixed microstructure. In this second part, the evolution of the microstructure is addressed. Differential equations governing the evolution of the microstructural parameters in terms of the applied loading are derived and their integration in time is discussed. Void growth results in a global softening of the stress–strain response of the material. A simple model for the prediction of void coalescence is proposed which can serve to predict the overall ductility of polycrystalline porous materials under the combined action of thermal dilatation and internal pressure in the voids.