A piece of composite material about the size of a human hand might have up to 10 million fibers, each 10 microns thick. The fibers are then embedded in the matrix, an epoxy or other material that gives the composite its shape. To perform accurate simulations, the model for such a hand-sized piece might have 10 billion equations. Our goal is to look at systems with up to 10,000 fibers in 3-D on today's generation of hardware. Further, we believe that new statistical descriptions of composite materials will allow us to analyze truly large engineering problems.
Most codes usually fail when they try to model more than two fibers in three dimensions.
At the same time, the researchers are improving the numerical methods on two fronts, first by making them more efficient, and second by making them more accurate. Our goal is to look at systems with up to 10,000 fibers in 3-D on today's generation of hardware. The collaboration with Rodin's group is expanding our techniques into the mesoscale and continuum scale. This is critical for solving real systems, and it's a very exciting place to be. Like most materials engineering work, the methods from the Texas group look at the epoxy matrix as a continuous substance that smoothly engulfs the fibers.