Effect of Hydrostatic Pressure on Damage in Particulate Composites

Abstract Hydrostatic pressure affects the damage growth in a particulate composite. As a result, an analytical model was presented to represent the damage growth in a particulate composite under various hydrostatic pressures. The model was based on a multi-level approach with damage description at the micro-level. A damage theory was presented to describe the material behavior under hydrostatic pressure. The effect of hydrostatic pressure was introduced to the damage theory through the damage function that was assumed to be a function of both deviatoric and volumetric strain energy densities. The predicted stress-strain curves with hydrostatic pressure compared well with the experimental data. Furthermore, the initial crack size at a notch tip was studied with and without hydrostatic pressure. The initial crack size determined from the computer modeling and simulation agreed well with the measured data with or without hydrostatic pressure.