Mesoscale Mechanics of Multifunctional Materials

Organizers

Manish Vasoya, Texas A&M University
Theocharis Baxevanis, University of Houston
Giulia Scalet, University of Pavia
Dimitris Lagoudas, Texas A&M University

Description

This symposium aims to provide a platform for presenting and discussing recent advances in physics-based mechanistic modeling of microstructure effects on the inelastic deformation in multifunctional materials at the mesoscale. Multifunctional materials are ubiquitous and include shape memory alloys (SMAs), ceramics, active polymers, and hydrogels. They find applications in soft robotics, energy harvesting, and storage devices. One of the common aspects among multifunctional materials is that microstructure evolves upon the external stimuli to perform a task. For instance, in SMAs, the austenite phase is transformed into the martensite phase and vice-versa upon the external thermomechanical stimuli, thus exhibiting the actions of sensors and actuators. Microstructural heterogeneities, such as polycrystal microstructure, precipitates, dislocations, and processing anisotropy, have profound impacts on the microstructural evolution and play a crucial role in achieving multifunctional properties. Understanding the mechanics of inelastic deformation associated with microstructural evolution, such as phase transformations and interactions between transforming microstructure with microstructural heterogeneities, are the essential part of this session. The session mainly focuses on mesoscale modeling, including micromechanics-based mesoscale models, phase-field models, crystal plasticity-based full-field microstructural modeling, and discrete dislocations simulations. Along with presentations on modeling, presentations discussing modern mesoscale characterization experiments are also encouraged to submit.