An upper bound to the free energy of n-variant polycrystalline shape memory alloys

Abstract

In the last two decades, the problem of computing the elastic energy of phase transforming materials has been studied by a variety of research groups. Due to the non-quasiconvexity of the underlying multi-well landscape, different relaxation methods have been used in order to estimate the quasiconvex envelope of the energy density, for which no explicit expression is known at present. This paper combines a recently developed lamination bound for monocrystalline shape memory alloys which relies on martensitic twinned microstructures with the work of Smyshlyaev and Willis [1998a. A ‘non-local’ variational approach to the elastic energy minimization of martensitic polycrystals. Proc. R. Soc. London A 454, 1573–1613]. As a result, a lamination upper bound for n-variant polycrystalline martensitic materials is obtained. The lamination bound is then compared with Reuß- and Taylor-type estimates. While, for given volume fractions, good agreement of lamination upper and convexification lower bounds is obtained, a comparison using energy-minimizing volume fractions computed from the various bounds yields larger differences. Finally, we also investigate the influence of the polycrystal's texture. For a strong ellipsoidal texture, we observe even better agreement of upper and lower bounds than for the case of isotropic statistics.