Boundary element analysis for composite materials and a library of Green's functions
With the rapid development of advanced composite materials and the wide application of such materials in engineering, it is desirable to model problems involving these materials by computer and to use powerful numerical methods like the finite element method (FEM) and the boundary element method (BEM) for analysis. In this paper, a BEM is developed to analyze two-dimensional micromechanical behavior of fiber-reinforced composites based on models for both perfectly-bonded and imperfectly-bonded materials in a unit cell. For composites with perfect bond between matrix and fibers, it is shown that our predictions coincide satisfactorily with comparable quantities obtained in physical experiments and by FEM analysis. For imperfectly-bonded composites, it is found that variation of the interphase parameters (thickness, stiffness) causes pronounced changes in the overall effective moduli and also in the state of stress in the composites. Also in this paper, the idea of a library of Green's functions for fiber-reinforced composites is discussed. With such a library, users could quickly generate data useful in design with very little knowledge of methods for computational modeling in general or of the BEM in particular.
composite materials green's functions boundary element method fiber-reinforced composites micromechanical analysis fibermatrix interface