Characterizing thermo-mechanical behavior of superalloy using the eigenfunction virtual fields method

•EVFM was extended to characterize thermo-mechanical behavior of superalloy.•Virtual fields were constructed using the eigenvectors of augmented strain matrix.•Effect of mesh size and noise on the identification results was analyzed.

An innovative procedure for characterizing thermo-mechanical behavior of superalloy using the Eigenfunction Virtual Fields Method (EVFM) was proposed. First, the principle of EVFM for thermo-mechanical constants identification was developed based on the principal components analysis. Then, the strain fields were extracted from finite element (FE) simulation of a superalloy plate with a circular hole under uniaxial tension and uniform temperature increment. In addition, the virtual fields were constructed using the eigenvectors of augmented strain matrix. Finally, the thermo-mechanical constants were inversed from the strain fields, and the effect of mesh size and noise on the inversion results was analyzed. The results show that the thermo-mechanical constants of superalloy inversed from EVFM using these eigenvectors as virtual fields are in excellent agreement with the true values.