Light thermal structures and materials for high speed flight

Over the last twenty years, unified viscoplastic constitutive models have evolved to meet this need. These constitutive models provide a means for representing a material's response from the elastic through the plastic range including strain-rate dependent plastic flow, creep, and stress relaxation. Rate-dependent plasticity effects are known to be important at elevated temperatures. The purpose of this paper is to describe computational and experimental research programs underway at the Light Thermal Structures Center focused on the investigation of the response of structures and materials to local heating. In the first part of the paper, finite element thermoviscoplastic analysis is highlighted. In the second part of the paper, the thermal-structures experimental program is outlined.