Superconvergence of the effective Cauchy stress in computational homogenization of inelastic materials

Abstract

AbstractWe provide theoretical investigations and empirical evidence that the effective stresses in computational homogenization of inelastic materials converge with a higher rate than the local solution fields. Due to the complexity of industrial‐scale microstructures, computational homogenization methods often utilize a rather crude approximation of the microstructure, favoring regular grids over accurate boundary representations. As the accuracy of such an approach has been under continuous verification for decades, it appears astonishing that this strategy is successful in homogenization, but is seldom used on component scale. A part of the puzzle has been solved recently, as it was shown that the effective elastic properties converge with twice the rate of the local strain and stress fields. Thus, although the local mechanical fields may be inaccurate, the averaging process leads to a cancellation of errors and improves the accuracy of the effective properties significantly. Unfortunately, the original argument is based on energetic considerations. The straightforward extension to the inelastic setting provides superconvergence of (pseudoelastic) potentials, but does not cover the primary quantity of interest: the effective stress tensor. The purpose of the work at hand is twofold. On the one hand, we provide extensive numerical experiments on the convergence rate of local and effective quantities for computational homogenization methods based on the fast Fourier transform. These indicate the superconvergence effect to be valid for effective stresses, as well. Moreover, we provide theoretical justification for such a superconvergence based on an argument that avoids energetic reasoning.