Simulation of Material Fracture in the Field of Thermal Stresses

Abstract

Internal stresses occur within a material in the presence of non-uniform deformation. The main types of the internal stresses are thermal, residual and those due to structural defects. These stresses affect diffusion (of interstitial impurities such as hydrogen and oxygen) resulting in damage induced degradation of mechanical material properties, such as the yield point. There are various mechanisms of material property changes, e.g., the decrease of the energy of surface fracture, and corrosion cracking and hydrogen embrittlement. In this paper, a theoretical formulation for thermal stress fields due to diffusion-induced fracture is presented. The kinetics of interstitial atom diffusion (e.g., hydrogen) is described by an equation of the parabolic type with corresponding initial and boundary conditions.