Eulerian finite element methods for the micromechanics of heterogeneous materials: Dynamic prioritization of material interfaces

In computational materials science, large deformations, phase changes, and the development of new free surfaces are frequent and important phenomena which must be included in the analyses. The multi-material Eulerian finite element formulation is therefore an attractive numerical approach. In the Eulerian formulation, the material interfaces are reconstructed after every time step based on the volumes of the different materials contained within each element. A central problem in the reconstruction is the determination of which materials are adjacent to each other. For highly heterogeneous microstructures, such as those found in materials science and biology, the adjacency of the materials changes spatially and evolves with time. A method for dynamically determining the adjacency of the materials is developed and applied to the shock densification of a powder.