A self-consistent estimate for linear viscoelastic polycrystals with internal variables inferred from the collocation method

The correspondence principle is customarily used with the Laplace–Carson transform technique to tackle the homogenization of linear viscoelastic heterogeneous media. The main drawback of this method lies in the fact that the whole stress and strain histories have to be considered to compute the mechanical response of the material during a given macroscopic loading. Following a remark of Mandel (1966 Mécanique des Milieux Continus(Paris, France: Gauthier-Villars)), Ricaud and Masson (2009 Int. J. Solids Struct. 46 1599–1606) have shown the equivalence between the collocation method used to invert Laplace–Carson transforms and an internal variables formulation. In this paper, this new method is developed for the case of polycrystalline materials with general anisotropic properties for local and macroscopic behavior. Applications are provided for the case of constitutive relations accounting for glide of dislocations on particular slip systems. It is shown that the method yields accurate results that perfectly match the standard collocation method and reference full-field results obtained with a FFT numerical scheme. The formulation is then extended to the case of time- and strain-dependent viscous properties, leading to the incremental collocation method (ICM) that can be solved efficiently by a step-by-step procedure. Specifically, the introduction of isotropic and kinematic hardening at the slip system scale is considered. (paper)