The Concept of Physical Metric in the Thermomechanical Modeling of Phase Transformations With Emphasis on Shape Memory Alloy Materials

In this work we derive a new version of generalized plasticity, suitable to describe phase transformations. In particular, we present a general multi surface formulation of the theory which is capable of describing the multiple and interacting loading mechanisms, which occur during phase transformations. The formulation relies crucially on the consideration of the intrinsic material (“physical”) metric as a primary internal variable and does not invoke any decomposition of the kinematical quantities into elastic and inelastic (transformation induced) parts. The new theory, besides its theoretical interest, is also important for application purposes such as the description and the prediction of the response of shape memory alloy materials. This is shown in the simplest possible setting by the introduction of a material model. The ability of the model in simulating several patterns of the experimentally observed behavior of these materials such as the pseudoelastic phenomenon and the shape memory effect is assessed by representative numerical examples.