Modeling of inter- and transgranular stress corrosion crack propagation in polycrystalline material by using phase field method

Abstract

A coupled multiphysics phase field framework is proposed to model anodic dissolution induced by stress corrosion fracture growth at microstructual level. The effects of electrochemical-mechanical processes (including crystal anisotropy) are all taken into account. This new model is based upon: (i) an anisotropic phase transformation model based on a variational formulation to describe material dissolution along preferential directions; (ii) an efficient description of grain boundaries as a smeared cohesive zone; (iii) an explicit approximation to model the different electrochemical behaviors between grain boundary and grain interior. Both intergranular and transgranular stress corrosion cracking is simulated in an efficient manner. The abilities of the proposed model are illustrated through several numerical examples involving a full prediction of complex crack network growth induced by stress corrosion cracking within 2D polycrystaline models.

Keywords

• anodic dissolution
• cohesive zone model
• crack propagation
• phase field
• polycrystals
• stress corrosion cracking