Continuum Modelling of Al-Cu Bimetallic Materials: Stress Intensity Factor Calculations

Abstract

This project mainly focus with the study of mechanical properties of Al-Cu bimetallic material with the implementation of ANSYS Mechanical APDL simulation software. AL-Cu bimetals have wide applications in different fields such as in electrical, electronic & piping industries, heat engines, thermostat, thermometer, electrical devices, etc. It has been beneficial to characterise its mechanical properties which would be helpful to extend its applications for a variety of purposes. Simulation studies first has carried out for pure aluminium and pure Copper material individually. Determination of Stress Intensity Factor(SIF)in Mode-I loading by varying the kind of cracks, crack length and applied stress, which has been compared with already done researches on pure aluminium & pure copper material respectively, for the authentication of proposed method to obtain the Stress Intensity Factor(SIF) in mode I condition by the method of ANSYS Mechanical APDL codes. Next, Al-Cu bimetallic material has modelled in Mechanical APDL and the authenticated codes have been implemented to determine its Stress Intensity Factor (SIF) only in mode I loading conditions, under the variation of applied stress and crack length. Simulation is further succeeded by introduction of three different kinds of crack types: edge crack, central crack and circular crack with edge at the centre. pecial case has taken by generating crack on either regions first in Al side and other on Cu side. In the last all the results have been concluded under Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics (LEFM)by plotting graphs of SIF Vs Applied stress and SIF Vs Crack length for comparison with the theoretical values.