Design and Implementation of Coupled Thermomechanical Failure Experiments

Abstract

The importance of developing the capability to accurately and predictively model failure under combined thermal and mechanical loadings can not be overstated. Development of the necessary constitutive and failure models relies heavily on laboratory experiments that provide detailed information at several levels, from material characterization to laboratory scale validation experiments of increasing complexity, eventually leading up to full scale validation. This work is part of an interdisciplinary program that seeks to develop solutions to a large class of coupled thermomechanical failure problems. Coupled thermal-mechanical experiments with well-defined, controlled boundary conditions were designed and implemented through an iterative process involving a team of experimentalists, material modelers, computational developers and analysts.