Driving forces on interfaces in elastic-plastic two phase materials

The theory of configurational forces is applied to a standard dissipative medium and specialized to an elastic ideally plastic material. Besides the inhomogeneity and physical volume force contribution an extra volume term appears which accounts for the distribution of the plastic deformation. The numerical treatment within the method of finite elements is briefly presented. The focus is on the driving forces originating from the plastic deformation. The theory is applied to inhomogeneous problems of an elastically misfitting inclusion embedded in an elastic and an elastic ideally plastic material, respectively. In conjunction with an applied load the eigenstrain causes configurational forces at the interface of the inclusion. The interpretation of driving forces for a morphological change of a fixed inclusion volume is given. The examples are motivated by the so-called rafting phenomenon in nickel-based alloys for high temperature applications