A multiscale mechanical model for materials based on virtual internal bond theory

ABSTRACTOnly two macroscopic parameters are needed to describe the mechanical properties of linear elastic solids, i.e. the Poisson's ratio and Young's modulus. Correspondingly, there should be two microscopic parameters to determine the mechanical properties of material if the macroscopic mechanical properties of linear elastic solids are derived from the microscopic level. Enlightened by this idea, a multiscale mechanical model for material, the virtual multi-dimensional internal bonds (VMIB) model, is proposed by incorporating a shear bond into the virtual internal bond (VIB) model. By this modification, the VMIB model associates the macro mechanical properties of material with the microscopic mechanical properties of discrete structure and the corresponding relationship between micro and macro parameters is derived. The tensor quality of the energy density function, which contains coordinate vector, is mathematically proved. From the point of view of VMIB, the macroscopic nonlinear behaviors of material could be attributed to the evolution of virtual bond distribution density induced by the imposed deformation. With this theoretical hypothesis, as an application example, a uniaxial compressive failure of brittle material is simulated. Good agreement between the experimental results and the simulated ones is found.