Symmetric Mesomechanical Model for Failure Analysis of Heterogeneous Materials

This manuscript provides a novel reduced-order multiscale modeling methodology for failure analysis of heterogeneous materials. The proposed methodology is based on the computational homogenization method for bridging multiple spatial scales and the eigendeformation-based model reduction method to incorporate failure in the microconstituents and interfaces. This computationally-efficient modeling methodology leads to symmetric reduced-order algebraic systems for evaluation of the microscale boundary value problem. The order and coarse grain-ing for the reduced-order system are systematically identified by a novel model development strategy. Verification studies reveal that the proposed methodology efficiently and accurately models the failure response. The proposed approach eliminates the spurious residual stress effect observed in reduced-order models, which pollutes the post-failure stress field at the macroscale.