Numerical quantification of the impact of microstructure on the mechanical behavior of particulate Al/SiC composites in 2D

The objectives of the current manuscript are twofold: (i) Introducing an automated computational framework for creating realistic finite element models of metal matrix composites (MMCs) microstructures; (ii) Implementing this technique to investigate the effect of microstructure on the mechanical behavior of an Al/SiC particulate MMC. A microstructure reconstruction algorithm is proposed, which relies on the Centroidal Voronoi tessellation, together with the erosion, random movement, and iterative elimination of the resulting Voronoi cells to create an initial periodic virtual microstructure. Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines are also employed to capture the realistic shapes of embedded particles. High fidelity finite element models of the composite microstructure are then created using a non-iterative Conforming to Interface Structured Adaptive Mesh Refinement (CISAMR) technique. This integrated numerical framework is employed to analyze the effect of an Al/SiC MMC microstructure on its mechanical behavior, considering the plastic deformation of the Al matrix and damage in the SiC particles.