Mechanical and thermomechanical mesoscale analysis of multiple surface cracks in ceramic coatings based on the DEM-FEM coupling method

The present paper aims to use the concurrent coupling approach of Finite Element Method (FEM) and Discrete Element Method (DEM) to simulate the surface cracking and the local damage in ceramic coating-substrate structures due to mechanical and thermomechanical loading. DEM is an efficient approach for studying the brittle fracture phenomenon at the micro and mesoscale. There are limitations in the use of this method at the macro-scale due to the...