International audienceNanostructured and architectured copper niobium composite wires are excellent candidates for the generation of intense pulsed magnetic fields (> 90T) as they combine both high electrical conductivity and high strength. Multi-scaled Cu-Nb wires can be fabricated by accumulative drawing and bundling (a severe plastic deformation technique), leading to a multiscale, architectured and nanostructured microstructure providing a unique set of properties. This work presents a comprehensive multiscale study to predict the anisotropic effective electrical conductivity based on material nanostructure and architecture. Two homogenization methods are applied: a mean-field theory and a full-field approach. The size effect associated with the microstructure refinement is taken into account in the definition of the conductivity of each component in the composites. The multiscale character of the material is then accounted for through an iterative process. Both methods show excellent agreement with each other. The results are further compared, for the first time, with experimental data obtained by the four-point probe technique, and also show excellent agreement. Finally, the qualitative and quantitative understanding provided by these models demonstrates that the microstructure of Cu-Nb wires has a significant effect on the electrical conductivity

Nanostructured and architectured copper niobium composite wires are excellent candidates for the generation of intense pulsed magnetic fields (100T) as they combine both high strength and high electrical conductivity. Multi-scaled Cu-Nb wires are fabricated by accumulative drawing and bundling (a severe plastic deformation technique), leading to a multiscale, architectured, and nanostructured microstructure exhibiting a strong fiber crystallographic texture and elongated grain shape along the wire axis. This paper presents a comprehensive study of the effective elastoplastic behavior of this composite material by using two different approaches to model the microstructural features: full-field finite elements and mean-field modeling. As the material exhibits several characteristic scales, an original hierarchical strategy is proposed based on iterative scale transition steps from the nanometric grain scale to the millimetric macro-scale. The best modeling strategy is selected to estimate reliably the effective elasto-plastic behavior of Cu-Nb wires with minimum computational time. Finally, for the first time, the models are confronted to tensile tests and in-situ neutron diffraction experimental data with a good agreement.