Effects of temperature and thermo-mechanical couplings on material instabilities and strain localization of inelastic materials

A general framework for rate-independent, small-strain, thermoinelastic material behaviour is presented, which includes thermo-plasticity and -damage as particular cases. In this context, strain localization and the development of material instabilities are investigated to highlight the roles of thermal effects and thermomechanical couplings. During a loading process, it is shown that two conditions play the essential roles and correspond to the singularity of the isothermal and the adiabatic acoustic tensors. Under quasi-static conditions, strain localization (in a classical sense) may occur when either of these two conditions is met. It involves a jump in temperature rate in the latter case, whereas temperature rate remains continuous in the former, but a discontinuity in the spatial derivatives of the heat flux must occur. This is consistent with the condition of stationarity of acceleration waves, which are shown to be homothermal and propagate with a velocity related to the eigenvalues of the isothermal acoustic tensor. A linear perturbation analysis further clarifies the above findings. In particular, for a quasi-static path of an infinite medium, failure of positive definiteness of either of the acoustic tensors corresponds to bifurcations in wave-like modes of arbitrary wave-length and infinite rate of growth. Under dynamic conditions, unbounded growth of perturbations is associated only to the short wavelength regime and corresponds to divergence growth or flutter phenomena relative to the isothermal acoustic tensor. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.