A macroscopic model for plastic flow in metal-matrix composites (Q1905450)

The authors develop a micromechanically based continuum model to analyze the enhancement of plastic properties of particulate-reinforced metal-matrix composites. The composite is idealized as uniformly distributed periodic arrays of unit cells. Each unit cell consists of a rigid inclusion surrounded by a plastically deforming material. The authors adopt an energy method to obtain the overall constitutive relation for the composite using the local nonuniform deformation fields. They discuss the effects of particle volume fractions and shapes as well as the matrix properties on the flow properties of the composite. The authors show that the results are in good agreement with experimental observations and the finite element results available in the literature. Finally, an explicit expression is proposed, providing the means of evaluating various factors affecting the strength of composites.