Ageing of low alloy steel in nuclear applications commonly takes the form as a hardening and an embrittlement of the material. This is due to the evolution of the microstructure during irradiation and at purely thermal conditions, as a combination or separate. Irradiation introduces evenly distributed solute clusters, while thermal ageing has been shown to yield a more inhomogeneous distribution. These clusters affect the dislocation motion within the material and results in a hardening and in more severe cases of ageing, also a decreased work hardening slope due to plastic strain localization into bands/channels. Embrittlement corresponds to decreased fracture toughness due to microstructural changes resulting from ageing. The thesis presents a possible framework for modeling of ageing effects in low alloy steels.In Paper I, a strain gradient plasticity framework is applied in order to capture length scale effects. The constitutive length scale is assumed to be related to the dislocation mean free path and the changes this undergoes during plastic deformation. Several evolution laws for the length scale were developed and implemented in a FEM-code considering 2D plane strain. This was used to solve a test problem of pure bending in order to investigate the effects of the length scale evolution. As all length scale evolution laws considered in this study results in a decreasing length scale; this leads to a loss of non-locality which causes an overall softening at cases where the strain gradient is dominating the solution. The results are in tentative agreement with phenomena of strain localization that is occurring in highly irradiated materials.In Paper II, the scalar stress measure for cleavage fracture is developed and generalized, here called the effective normal stress measure. This is used in a non-local weakest link model which is applied to two datasets from the literature in order to study the effects of the effective normal stress measure, as well as new experiments considering four-point bending of specimens containing a semi-elliptical surface crack. The model is shown to reproduce the failure probability of all considered datasets, i.e. well capable of transferring toughness information between different geometries. / Åldring av låglegerade stål i kärntekniska användningsområden framträder typiskt som ett hårdnande och en försprödning av materialet. Detta på grund av utvecklingen av mikrostrukturen under bestrålning och under rent termiska förhållanden. Bestrålning introducerar jämt fördelade kluster av legeringsämnen. Termisk åldring har däremot visats ge upphov till en mer ojämn fördelning. Klustren hämmar dislokationsrörelsen i materialet och ger därigenom upphov till en ökning av materialets sträckgräns, vid en mer påtaglig åldring det även leda till ett sänkt arbetshårdnande på grund av lokalisering av plastisk töjning i s.k. kanaler/band. Försprödning är en sänkning av materialets brottseghet som en följd av de mikrostrukturella förändringar som sker vid åldring. Arbetet som presenteras i den här avhandlingen har gjorts i syfte till att ta fram ett möjligt ramverk för modellering av låglegerade stål.I Artikel I, används en töjningsgradientbaserad plasticitetsteori för att kunna fånga längdskalebeteenden. Längdskalan i teorin antas vara relaterad till dislokationernas medelfria väg och den förändring den genomgår vid plastisk deformation. Flera utvecklingslagar för längdskalan har analyserats och implementerats i en finita element kod för 2D plan deformation. Denna implementering har använts för att lösa ett testproblem bestående av ren böjning med syfte att undersöka effekterna av utvecklingen hos längdskalan. Alla de utvecklingslagar som presenteras i artikeln ger en minskande längdskala, vilket leder till vad som valt att kallas förlust av icke-lokalitet. Fenomenet leder till ett övergripande mjuknande vid fall där den plastiska töjningsgradienten har stor inverkan på lösningen. Resultaten är i preliminär överenstämmelse med de typer av lokalisering av plastisk töjning som observerats i starkt bestrålade material.I Artikel II utvecklas ett generaliserat spänningsmått i syfte att beskriva klyvbrott, här benämnt effektivt normalspänningsmått. Detta har använts i samband med en icke-lokal svagaste länk modell, som har applicerats på två experimentella studier från den öppna litteraturen i syfte att studera effekterna av det effektiva normalspänningsmåttet. Utöver detta presenteras även nya experiment på ytspruckna provstavar under fyrpunktsböj. I artikeln visas att modellen återskapar sannolikheten för brott för alla undersökta experimentuppställningar, d.v.s. modellen visas vara väl duglig för att överföra brottseghet mellan geometrier. / <p>QC 20190312</p>

In this thesis, the focus has been on micro-mechanical mechanisms in polymer-based materials and structures. The first part of the thesis treats length-scale effects on polymer materials. Experiments have showed that the smaller the specimen, the stronger is the material. The length-scale effect was examined experimentally in two different polymers materials, polystyrene and epoxy. First micro-indentations to various depths were made on polystyrene. The experiments showed that length-scale effects in inelastic deformations exist in polystyrene. It was also possible to show a connection between the experimental findings and the molecular length. The second experimental study was performed on glass-sphere filled epoxy, where the damage development for tensile loading was investigated. It could be showed that the debond stresses increased with decreasing sphere diameter. The debonding grew along the interface and eventually these cracks kinked out into the matrix. It was found that the length to diameter ratio of the matrix cracks increased with increasing diameter. The experimental findings may be explained by a length-scale effect in the yield process which depends on the strain gradients. The second part of the thesis treats mechano-sorptive creep in paper, i.e. the acceleration of creep by moisture content changes. Paper can be seen as a polymer based composite that consists of a network of wood fibres, which in its turn are natural polymer composites. A simplified network model for mechano-sorptive creep has been developed. It is assumed that the anisotropic hygroexpansion of the fibres leads to large stresses at the fibre-fibre bonds when the moisture content changes. The resulting stress state will accelerate creep if the fibre material obeys a constitutive law that is non-linear in stress. Fibre kinks are included in order to capture experimental observations of larger mechano-sorptive creep effects in compression than in tension. Furthermore, moisture dependent material parameters and anisotropy are taken into account. Theoretical predictions based on the developed model are compared to experimental results for anisotropic paper both under tensile and compressive loading at varying moisture content. The important features in the experiments are captured by the model. Different kinds of drying conditions have also been examined. / QC 20100910