No label defined (Q4493715)

The paper formulates a micromechanical model for behavior of steels, possessing the transformation induced plasticity (TRIP) phenomenon. This approach assumes a multivariant description at grain level. The analysis is based on the typical microscale mechanism of martensitic phase transformation, corresponding to the formation of microdomains with moving boundaries. First, the thermodynamic driving force acting on a moving boundary is derived from energy dissipation calculated in the general case of heterogeneous elasticity, taking into account the jump of inelastic strains across the moving boundary. In the case of quasistatic and isothermal approximation, the dissipation is given by the difference between the power developed by external forces and the variation of Helmholtz free energy chosen as a potential describing the thermodynamic state of the two-phase system at a certain stage of transformation. The Helmholtz free energy, its time derivative, the power of external forces, and the intrinsic dissipation are calculated during the plastification and transformation. Assuming an ellipsoidal growing of martensitic microdomains and taking into account some physical aspects typical of martensitic phase transformation in ductile materials, the obtained dissipation is reduced to a more simple form, leading to the choice of volume fraction of a martensitic domain, belonging to each crystallographically possible martensitic variants, as internal variables which describe the evolution of martensitic phase transition. The conditions for the nucleation and growth of a martensitic microdomain are obtained, using simultaneously the classical inelastic inclusion problem together with interface operators. The obtained driving forces allow to describe several modes of growing, namely homothetic, plane and lath ones. The obtained results are combined with kinetics and kinematics studies of martensitic transformation in ductile materials to derive the constitutive equations of an austenitic single crystals, from which the overall behavior of polycrystalline TRIP steels is deduced, using the self-consistent scale transition method. The obtained numerical results are compared with experimental ones.