VARIATIONAL MULTISCALE ANALYSIS OF SOLIDS WITH STRAIN GRADIENT PLASTIC EFFECTS USING MESHFREE APPROXIMATION

Abstract

A meshfree multiscale method is presented for efficient analysis of solids with strain gradient plastic effects. In the analysis of strain gradient plastic solids, localization due to increased hardening of strain gradient effect appears. Chen-Wang theory is adopted, as a strain gradient plasticity theory. It represents strain gradient effects as an internal variable and retains the essential structure of classical plasticity theory. In this work, the scale decomposition is carried out based on variational form of the problem. Coarse scale is designed to represent global behavior and fine scale to represent local behavior and gradient effect by using the intrinsic length scale. From the detection of high strain gradient region, fine scale region is adopted. Each scale variable is approximated using meshfree method. Meshfree approximation is well suited for adaptivity. As a method of increasing resolution, partition of unity based extrinsic enrichment is used. Each scale problem is solved iteratively. The proposed method is applied to bending of a thin beam and bimaterial shear layer and micro-indentation problems. Size effects can be effectively captured in the results of the analysis.