Special Seminar by Prof Eckart Schnack

Professor Eckart Schnack from the Karlruhe Institute of Technology in Germany has given a Special Seminar in the newly inaugurated Neptune Lecture room at the Wessex Institute of Technology.

The lecture was entitled “Applying NTFA method for nonlinear homogenization of metal-ceramic composites of AlSi12/Al2O3”

Metal Matrix Composites (MMC) are important lightweight materials because of their excellent mechanic properties. In this work, the 3D model microstructure of AlSi12/Al2O3 with periodic spatial discretization is produced and used as the virtual material for the homogenization process. With an efficient description of the macroscopic thermo-mechanical behavior of metal-ceramic composites, the thermo-mechanical homogenization method, the non-uniform transformation field analysis (NTFA) was adopted and extended by reformulation of the underlying equations. This method is an ’’order reduction’’ technique specifically designed for homogenization problems with micro-mechanical motivation. The implementation of NTFA was based on the finite element method. The homogenized material model was implemented into ABAQUS in structural analysis. Comparison of numerical results with full-field simulation highlights the efficiency of NTFA for three-dimensional homogenization problems.

The lecture was followed with great interest by the participants and resulted in a long and lively discussion.

Prof Schnack is a Member of the Board of Directors of the Wessex Institute of Technology.