Computational simulations of intergranular fracture of polycrystalline materials and size effect

Grain boundaries are important elements associated with micro-structural heterogeneity in polycrystalline materials. The influence of the grain boundary character distribution on intergranular fracture of polycrystals is investigated in this paper. Considering the random heterogeneity of materials, a two-dimensional stochastic finite element method (SFEM) is used to simulate the intergranular damage and failure process of polycrystals. The impact of the fraction and distribution of random grain boundaries on the fracture behavior is discussed, and the effect of model size on results is also evaluated.