Large-scale mircomechanics 3D model to simulate damage in heterogeneous materials

Modern image detection techniques such as micro computer tomography (µCT) enable researchers to resolve micro-structures in technical and biological materials in 3D with resolutions up to 1µm. Automated image processing techniques can transfer these image data into discredited models with very high resolution of the underlying material structure. Therewith much simpler and straightforward material laws can be applied on micro-scale  without the need to perform macroscopic material experiments in order to capture anisotropy or damage and fracture effects. The project develops a method which allows to model different material on micro-scale for large-scale specimen, e.g. complete test specimen, by regular grid discretizations. The resulting equation system with a large number of degrees of freedom (dofs) can then be solved - linear or physical non-linear - by efficient iterative solver methods without necessity to build and store the global stiffness matrix.Therefor also damage simulation can be conducted. The method is applicable to different materials like bone (trabecular structure), metal foams or metals (micro-voids in aero-construction materials).