A Variational Approach to Modeling Coupled Thermo-Mechanical Nonlinear Dissipative Behaviors

This chapter provides a general and self-contained overview of the variational approach to nonlinear dissipative thermo-mechanical problems initially proposed in Ortiz and Stainier (1999) and Yang, Stainier, and Ortiz (2006). This approach allows to reformulate boundary-value problems of coupled thermo-mechanics as an optimization problem of an energy-like functional. The formulation includes heat transfer and general dissipative behaviors described in the thermodynamic framework of Generalized Standard Materials. A particular focus is taken on thermo-visco-elasticity and thermo-visco-plasticity. Various families of models are considered (Kelvin–Voigt, Maxwell, crystal plasticity, von Mises plasticity), both in small and large strains. Time-continuous and time-discrete (incremental) formulations are derived. A particular attention is dedicated to numerical algorithms which can be constructed from the variational formulation: for a broad class of isotropic material models, efficient predictor–corrector schemes can be derived, in the spirit of the radial return algorithm of computational plasticity. Variational approximation methods based on Ritz–Galerkin approach (including standard finite elements) are also described for the solution of the coupled boundary-value problem. Some pointers toward typical applications for which the variational formulation proved advantageous and useful are finally given