Influence of parallelogram cells in the axial behaviour of fibrous composite

Effective longitudinal shear moduli closed-form analytical expressions of two-phase fibrous periodic composites are obtained by means of the asymptotic homogenization method (AHM) for a parallelogram array of circular cylinders. This work is an extension of previous reported results, where elastic, piezoelectric and magneto-electro-elastic composites for square and hexagonal arrays with perfect contact were considered. The constituents exhibit transversely isotropic properties. A doubly period-parallelogram array of cylindrical inclusions under longitudinal shear is studied. The behaviour of the anisotropic shear elastic coefficients is studied for several cell geometry arrays. Numerical examples and comparisons with other theoretical results demonstrate that the present model is efficient for the analysis of composites in which the periodic cell is rectangular, rhombic or a parallelogram. The effect of the arrangement of the cells on the shear effective property is discussed. The present method can provide benchmark results for other numerical and approximate methods.     

Analysis of fibrous elastic composites with nonuniform imperfect adhesion

In most composites, the fiber–matrix adhesion is imperfect; the continuity conditions for stresses and displacements are not satisfied. In this contribution, effective elastic moduli are obtained by means of the asymptotic homogenization method (AHM), for three-phase fibrous composites (matrix/mesophase/fiber) with parallelogram periodic cell. Interaction between fiber and matrix is considered, and this is called the mesophase model where the nonuniform mesophase is studied. Besides, there is another type of matrix–fiber contact which is called nonuniform spring imperfect contact. In this case, the contrast or jump of the displacements in the boundary of each phase is proportional to the corresponding component of the tension in the interface in terms of a parameter given by a certain function that depends on the position. The constituents of the composites exhibit transversely isotropic properties. A doubly periodic parallelogram array of cylindrical inclusions under longitudinal shear is considered. The three-phase model is validated by the Finite Element Method and the AHM both approaches applied to two-phase composites with nonuniform spring imperfect contact. Comparisons with theoretical and experimental results verified that the present model is efficient for the analysis of composites with presence of nonuniform imperfect interface and parallelogram cell. The effect of the nonuniform imperfection on the shear effective property is observed. The present method can provide benchmark results for other numerical and approximate methods.     

Calculation of effective coefficients for piezoelectric fiber composites based on a general numerical homogenization technique

Numerical unit cell models for 1–3 periodic composites made of piezoceramic unidirectional cylindrical fibers embedded in a soft non-piezoelectric matrix are developed. The unit cell is used for prediction of the effective coefficients of the periodic transversely isotropic piezoelectric cylindrical fiber composite. Special emphasis is placed on the formulation of the boundary conditions that allows the simulation of all modes of overall deformation arising from any arbitrary combination of mechanical and electrical loading. The numerical approach is based on the finite element method (FEM) and it allows the extension to composites with arbitrary geometrical inclusion configurations, providing a powerful tool for fast calculation of their effective properties. For verification the effective coefficients are evaluated for square and hexagonal arrangements of unidirectional piezoelectric cylindrical fiber composites. The results obtained from the numerical technique are compared with those obtained by means of the analytical asymptotic homogenization method (AHM) for different fiber volume fractions.     

Effects of the piezoelectric phase’s geometric properties on effective coefficients of 1–3 piezoelectric composites

The present paper reports the electromechanical coupling coefficients of piezoelectric composite material (PCM) are affected by different geometric properties of piezoelectric phase for 1–3 periodic composites that is made of piezoceramic fibers embedded in a soft non-piezoelectric matrix. Three-dimensional finite element model has been developed to study the three types of geometric models of piezoelectric phase with different volume fraction. Geometric models with circular cylinder, square column and circular cylinder alternated with square column are used to predict the coefficients of the validity via asymptotic homogenization method (AHM) and the numerical approach the finite element method (FEM). Three types of geometric model are built via the finite element software ABAQUS, and the elastic, piezoelectric and dielectric coefficients are evaluated via AHM both FEM. The results indicate that the validity parameters of PCM have the direct relationship with the volume fraction, and geometric shape is essential factor for distribution of Von-Misses when device working. The present work may improve application of 1–3 type PCM and offer useful guidelines to the design of PCM devices.     

微观结构对复合材料弹性有效性能的影响

在渐近均匀化方法的基础上,用ANSYS参数设计语言建立了周期性边界条件,用ANSYS有限元程序对单胞进行求解,得到了复合材料的有效性能。分析了不同微观结构对材料有效性能的影响,并与实验和其它理论结果进行比较。得到了不同方向的方形纤维对于材料的有效模量和有效泊松比的影响。     

Tight bounds for three-dimensional nonlinear incompressible elastic composites

Tighter variational bounds, in the whole range of inclusion volume fraction, that is to say, even near percolation, for the effective energy of nonlinear composites, in the special case of 3D two-phase incompressible elastic composites with isotropic constituents are presented. Following the methodology of Talbot, Willis and Ponte Castañeda, a linear comparison material with the same microgeometry as the nonlinear composite is employed. The asymptotic homogenization method (AHM) combined with a finite element analysis (FEM), is used to find the displacement field as well as the effective properties for the comparison material. An elastic composite with periodically distributed spherical inclusions in a cubic array is considered as an example. Various numerical examples are performed. Comparisons with others theories (i.e. variational bounds, self-consistent estimates, etc.) are shown. Coincidence of the AHM-FEM results with the universal bounds of Nemat-Nasser, Yu and Hori serves as a useful check to the numerical calculation.     

Closed-form effective elastic constants of frame-like periodic cellular solids by a symbolic object-oriented finite element program

In this study, the effective elastic constants of several 2D and 3D frame-like periodic cellular solids with different unit-cell topologies are analytically derived using the homogenization method based on equivalent strain energy. The analytical expressions of strain energy of a unit cell under different strain modes are determined using a generic symbolic object-oriented finite element (FE) program written in MATLAB. The obtained analytical expressions of the strain energy are then used to symbolically compute the effective elastic constants that include Young’s moduli, Poisson’s ratios, and shear moduli. The obtained analytical effective elastic constants are numerically verified using results from an ordinary numerical FE program. The obtained closed-form effective elastic constants are also compared with some existing solutions from the literature. This study demonstrates that symbolic computation platforms can be properly used to provide efficient methodologies for finding useful analytical solutions of mechanical problems. Without the symbolic object-oriented FE program in this study, elaborate and tedious analytical analysis has to be manually performed for each different unit cell. The symbolic object-oriented FE program provides analytical analysis of unit cells that is accurate and fast. The object-oriented programming technique allows the symbolic FE program in this study to be efficiently implemented.     

Eigenstrain and Fourier series for evaluation of elastic local fields and effective properties of periodic composites

The elastic stress and strain fields and effective elasticity of periodic composite materials are determined by imposing a periodic eigenstrain on a homogeneous solid, which is constrained to be equivalent to the heterogeneous composite material through the imposition of a consistency condition. To this end, the variables of the problem are represented by Fourier series and the consistency condition is written in the Fourier space providing the system of equations to solve. The proposed method can be considered versatile as it allows determining stress and strain fields in micro-scale and overall properties of composites with different kinds of inclusions and defects. In the present work, the method is applied to multi-phase composites containing long fibers with circular transverse section. Numerical solutions provided by the proposed method are compared with finite element results for both unit cell containing a single fiber and unit cell with multiple fibers of different sizes.     

Composite materials whose phases have partially equal elastic moduli

Hill [J. Mech. Phys. Solids 11 (1963) 357, 12 (1964) 199] discovered that, regardless of its microstructure, a linearly elastic composite of two isotropic phases with identical shear moduli is isotropic and has the effective shear modulus equal to the phase ones. The present work generalizes this result to anisotropic phase composites by showing and exploiting the fact that uniform strain and stress fields exist in every composite whose phases have certain common elastic moduli. Precisely, a coordinate-free condition is given to characterize this specific class of elastic composites; an efficient algebraic method is elaborated to find the uniform strain and stress fields of such a composite and to obtain the structure of the effective elastic moduli in terms of the phase ones; sufficient microstructure-independent conditions are deduced for the orthogonal group symmetry of the effective elastic moduli. These results are applied to elastic composites consisting of isotropic, transversely isotropic and orthotropic phases.     

双周期涂层纤维增强复合材料反平面剪切问题

研究了双周期含涂层纤维增强复合材料在远场反平面载荷作用时的问题 , 利用 Eshelby等效夹杂方法和 Laurent 级数展开技术 , 并结合双准周期 Riemann边值问题理论 , 获得了其全场解析解 , 得到了应力场和有效模量表达式。与有限元结果的对照显示出本方法的效率和精度。考察了涂层参数对复合材料细观应力场和宏观有效性能的影响。当涂层刚度较大时 , 涂层内存在高的应力集中 , 且涂层刚度越大、 涂层相对厚度越小 , 应力集中系数越大。纤维刚度对复合材料有效模量的影响也取决于涂层性能 , 非常软或非常硬的涂层都大大限制了纤维刚度对复合材料有效模量的贡献。      

Mechanical modeling of incompressible particle-reinforced neo-Hookean composites based on numerical homogenization

In this paper, the mechanical response of incompressible particle-reinforced neo-Hookean composites (IPRNC) under general finite deformations is investigated numerically. Three-dimensional Representative Volume Element (RVE) models containing 27 non-overlapping identical randomly distributed spheres are created to represent neo-Hookean composites consisting of incompressible neo-Hookean elastomeric spheres embedded within another incompressible neo-Hookean elastomeric matrix. Four types of finite deformation (i.e., uniaxial tension, uniaxial compression, simple shear and general biaxial deformation) are simulated using the finite element method (FEM) and the RVE models with periodic boundary condition (PBC) enforced. The simulation results show that the overall mechanical response of the IPRNC can be well-predicted by another simple incompressible neo-Hookean model up to the deformation the FEM simulation can reach. It is also shown that the effective shear modulus of the IPRNC can be well-predicted as a function of both particle volume fraction and particle/matrix stiffness ratio, using the classical linear elastic estimation within the limit of current FEM software.     

含周期性索-杆胞元的二维网格结构拟膜分析

利用拟膜法分析含周期性索-杆胞元的二维网格结构的面内有效弹性性能。拟膜法是将具有周期性微结构的平面网格结构在力学性能上比拟成均匀的连续体。根据两者在面内力学行为上的等效性,网格结构的拟膜的弹性本构参数可由网格结构中单胞的材料和几何参数解析表示。分析表明索-杆胞元存在拉压性能差异现象。这导致拟膜表现出双模量特点,即材料沿某一方向的拉伸弹性模量与压缩模量不同。采用悬臂梁算例考察这些参数的正确性:利用网格结构和其拟膜分别构造同尺寸和工况的两个悬臂梁;利用有限元方法分析两个梁;比较得出两个梁的中性层位置与解析解均吻合,且两个梁中性层挠度之间的相对误差极小。     

A comparison of homogenization and standard mechanics analyses for periodic porous composites

Composite material elastic behavior has been studied using many approaches, all of which are based on the concept of a Representative Volume Element (RVE). Most methods accurately estimate effective elastic properties when the ratio of the RVE size to the global structural dimensions, denoted here as , goes to zero. However, many composites are locally periodic with finite . The purpose of this paper was to compare homogenization and standard mechanics RVE based analyses for periodic porous composites with finite . Both methods were implemented using a displacement based finite element formulation. For one-dimensional analyses of composite bars the two methods were equivalent. Howver, for two- and three-dimensional analyses the methods were quite different due to the fact that the local RVE stress and strain state was not determined uniquely by the applied boundary conditions. For two-dimensional analyses of porous periodic composites the effective material properties predicted by standard mechanics approaches using multiple cell RVEs converged to the homogenization predictions using one cell. In addition, homogenization estimates of local strain energy density were within 30% of direct analyses while standard mechanics approaches generally differed from direct analyses by more than 70%. These results suggest that homogenization theory is preferable over standard mechanics of materials approaches for periodic composites even when the material is only locally periodic and is finite.     

三维编织复合材料紧固件剪切强度预报

建立了三维缎纹编织复合材料代表性体积单元(RVE)和紧固件剪切试件模型,引入周期性边界条件,建立了材料的宏观力学性能预报方法,并采用跨尺度计算方法对不同受载角度下的紧固件剪切破坏过程进行了有限元模拟。进行了三维缎纹编织复合材料紧固件的剪切试验,有限元计算结果与试验结果吻合较好,验证了本方法的可行性。分析了不同受载角度对剪切破坏模式及强度的影响,结果表明,该编织复合材料剪切强度随受载角度增大而降低,且具有不同的损伤起始位置和扩展过程。     

Combining self-consistent and numerical methods for the calculation of elastic fields and effective properties of 3D-matrix composites with periodic and random microstructures

The work is devoted to the calculation of static elastic fields in 3D-composite materials consisting of a homogeneous host medium (matrix) and an array of isolated heterogeneous inclusions. A self-consistent effective field method allows reducing this problem to the problem for a typical cell of the composite that contains a finite number of the inclusions. The volume integral equations for strain and stress fields in a heterogeneous medium are used. Discretization of these equations is performed by the radial Gaussian functions centered at a system of approximating nodes. Such functions allow calculating the elements of the matrix of the discretized problem in explicit analytical form. For a regular grid of approximating nodes, the matrix of the discretized problem has the Toeplitz properties, and matrix-vector products with such matrices may be calculated by the fast fourier transform technique. The latter accelerates significantly the iterative procedure. First, the method is applied to the calculation of elastic fields in a homogeneous medium with a spherical heterogeneous inclusion and then, to composites with periodic and random sets of spherical inclusions. Simple cubic and FCC lattices of the inclusions which material is stiffer or softer than the material of the matrix are considered. The calculations are performed for cells that contain various numbers of the inclusions, and the predicted effective constants of the composites are compared with the numerical solutions of other authors. Finally, a composite material with a random set of spherical inclusions is considered. It is shown that the consideration of a composite cell that contains a dozen of randomly distributed inclusions allows predicting the composite effective elastic constants with sufficient accuracy.     

Cavitation instabilities between fibres in a metal matrix composite

Short fibre reinforced metal matrix composites (MMC) are studied here to investigate the possibility that a cavitation instability can develop in the metal matrix. The high stress levels needed for a cavitation instability may occur in metal–ceramic systems due to the constraint on plastic flow induced by bonding to the ceramics that only show elastic deformation. In an MMC the stress state in the metal matrix is highly non-uniform, varying between regions where shear stresses are dominant and regions where hydrostatic tension is strong. An Al–SiC whisker composite with a periodic pattern of transversely staggered fibres is here modelled by using an axisymmetric cell model analysis. First the critical stress level is determined for a cavitation instability in an infinite solid made of the Al matrix material. By studying composites with different distributions and aspect ratios of the fibres it is shown that regions between fibre ends may develop hydrostatic tensile stresses high enough to exceed the critical level for a cavitation instability. For cases where a void is located in such regions it is shown that unstable cavity growth develops when the void is initially much smaller than the highly stressed region of the material.     

A three-dimensional micromechanical model to predict the viscoelastic behavior of woven composites

Polymer matrix based cloth composites are increasingly used in engineering applications. For such composites, significant viscoelastic behavior can be observed for dynamic load conditions. The viscoelastic effect is primarily due to the polymeric matrix used as most of the fibers used in structural applications are elastic. Matrix does not show a major contribution in the axial properties of composites, thus in the traditional modeling its viscoelastic nature is often ignored. However, the effective out of plane properties are influenced by the matrix material and exhibit significant damping characteristics. Therefore, a complete three-dimensional (3-D) model considering the viscoelastic nature of matrix is needed for better understanding of cloth composites. An analytical 3-D micromechanical model based on classical laminate theory (CLT) is verified, in this paper for the prediction of effective elastic and viscoelastic properties of a cloth composite. The method is shown to be accurate. This model is extended to the viscoelastic regime with the use of Laplace transform and correspondence principle. Prony series coefficients for composite cloth are obtained for different volume fractions of fibers in yarn. It is observed from the hysteresis plots that dissipation in out of plane normal and shear modes is significantly higher than the normal directions.     

Debonding of cellular structures with fibre-reinforced cell walls under shear deformation

Many natural structures are cellular solids at millimetre scale and fibre-reinforced composites at micrometre scale. For these structures, mechanical properties are associated with cell strength, and phenomena such as cell separation through debonding of the middle lamella in cell walls are key in explaining some important characteristics or behaviour. To explore such phenomena, we model cellular structures with non-linear hyperelastic cell walls under large shear deformations, and incorporate cell wall material anisotropy and unilateral contact between neighbouring cells in our models. Analytically, we show that, for two cuboid walls in unilateral contact and subject to generalised shear, gaps can appear at the interface between the deforming walls. Numerically, when finite element models of periodic structures with hexagonal cells are sheared, significant cell separation is captured diagonally across the structure. Our analysis further reveals that separation is less likely between cells with high internal cell pressure (e.g. in fresh and growing fruit and vegetables) than between cells where the internal pressure is low (e.g. in cooked or ageing plants).     

纤维束分布对复合材料有效性能的影响

针对纤维束增强相在基体材料中的分布方式不同,建立了由固体基体和纤维束增强相两相介质组成的复合材料细观力学模型。假设该模型的细观结构呈周期性均匀分布,纤维束内的纤维接触是光滑的。采用二尺度展开法计算了复合材料的有效性能,得出了不同微结构分布的复合材料的刚度系数、横向弹性模量、泊松比和剪切模量随纤维束体分比的变化曲线,并将数值结果与实验数据进行了比较。研究表明,数值结果与实验数据有较好的吻合,增强相的分布直接影响到复合材料的力学性能。     

三维机织复合材料多尺度黏弹性分析

建立了一种三维机织复合材料多尺度的黏弹性分析模型。首先构造了微观尺度纱线束胞元和细观尺度复合材料周期结构胞元两级有限元模型, 由微观尺度胞元分析得到纱线束的弹性常数, 再代入细观尺度胞元计算出复合材料的平均弹性常数。两级胞元模型均施加周期边界条件, 保证了胞元边界上位移和应力满足周期性和连续性。随后分别建立了树脂基体和浸润树脂纱线束的蠕变模型, 用实验标定树脂的蠕变参数, 代入微观尺度胞元进行蠕变计算来修正纱线束蠕变模型的参数。最后将树脂和纱线束的蠕变本构关系应用于细观尺度胞元, 得到材料宏观平均的应力-应变响应, 模拟了三维机织复合材料的蠕变实验曲线。本文模型对于该种复合材料弹性常数和蠕变性能的预测, 均与实验吻合。