Equilibrium morphology of misfit particles in elastically stressed solids under chemo-mechanical equilibrium conditions

This paper studies the effects of chemical, elastic and interfacial energies on the equilibrium morphology of misfit particles due to phase separation in binary alloys under chemo-mechanical equilibrium conditions. A continuum framework that governs the chemo-mechanical equilibrium of the system is first developed using a variational approach by treating the phase interface as a sharp interface endowed with interfacial excess energy. An extended finite element method (XFEM) in conjunction with the level set method is then developed to simulate the behaviors of the coupled chemo-mechanical system. The coupled chemo-mechanics model together with the numerical techniques developed here provides an efficient simulation tool to predict the equilibrium morphologies of precipitates in phase separate alloys. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.