Chemomechanical behaviors of particle enforced heterogeneous composites with chemical interfacial jumps

Abstract

Deep understanding of mass diffusion controlled chemomechanical behaviors of composites with local mass flux discontinuities between inclusions and matrixes are of great significance in modern advanced technology and engineering applications. This work develops a finite-deformation chemomechanical model for particle-enforced composites when under mass diffusion. A general chemomechanical cohesive model is developed for chemo-mechanically imperfect interfaces between the inclusions and matrixes. In the developed cohesive model, both of the displacement jump, the chemical potential jump as well as the mass flux jump are considered. A interfacial potential is developed upon the consideration that the diffusant permeation deteriorate interfacial fracture and degrade the interface strength. Applying standard variations procedure on total energy of the coupled chemomechanical system, the associated weak formulations are developed, and then implemented in finite element method software ABAQUS through subroutine UELs. To validate the proposed cohesive model, the mass-diffusion-driven crack propagation is simulated and compared with the published works. A series of numerical examples are conducted to elucidate the key features of chemo-mechanically imperfect interface model. The results show that the jump of mass flux across interface results in a normal swelling of interface even no mechanical load is applied. An increase of interface diffusion coefficient causes a lower chemical potential jump. Parametric analysis show that the interface properties, such as the cohesive strength, fracture energy and degradation parameter, affect the diffusion rate through controlling the mechanical performance of interface. A strong interface can restrict effectively the mass spread across the interface. This research provides a theoretical reference for a wide applications of particle-reinforced composites in chemical environment.