Short-term microdamage of a physically nonlinear particulate material under a combination of normal and tangential loads.

The structural theory of short-term damage is generalized to the case where the undamaged components of a particulate composite deform nonlinearly under loads that induce a compound stress state. The basis for this generalization is the stochastic elasticity equations for a particulate composite with porous components whose skeletons deform nonlinearly. Damage in a microvolume of the material is assumed to occur in accordance with the Huber-Mises failure criterion. Balance equations for damaged microvolume are derived for the physically nonlinear materials of the components. Together with the macrostress-macrostrain relationship for a particulate composite with porous nonlinear components, they constitute a closed-form system of equations. This system describes the coupled processes of physically nonlinear deformation and microdamage. Algorithms for calculating the microdamage-macrostrain relationship and plotting stress-strain curves are proposed. Such curves are plotted for the case where the composite is subjected to a combination of normal and tangential loads, and microdamages occur in the linearly hardened matrix and do not in the linearly elastic inclusions. The stress-strain curves are examined depending on the volume fraction of inclusions and presence of tangential stresses [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]