The effect of model size and boundary conditions on the representativeness of digital material representation simulations of ferritic-pearlitic sample compression

The main objective of this work is to investigate the representativeness of the digital material representation (DMR) models of ferritic-pearlitic steel generated by the hybrid cellular automata (CA) / Monte Carlo (MC) algorithm. Particular attention is focused on determining the effect of the size of the digital representation model on its representativeness under deformation conditions simulated with the finite element (FE) framework. In addition, the effect of periodic and non-periodic boundary conditions on the deformation behaviour of DMR models is analysed. A dedicated buffer zone approach applied the periodic boundary conditions on non-periodic finite element models. The results of equivalent stresses and strains and their average values are used to evaluate the differences between the models’ predictions.