Continuum Modeling of Synthetic Microvascular Materials

摘要

New multifunctional materials that include fluid passages are being developed. These materials hold promise for future high-performance aerospace structures. The fluid in the passages can enhance heat transfer, control deformation, provide resin for healing or remodeling, disclose damage, and modify stiffness and damping. This paper presents an engineering model for synthetic vascular materials that have fluid passages much smaller than a characteristic structural length such as panel thickness. A class of idealized materials is modeled as a two-phase continuum with a solid phase and a fluid phase occupying every volume. In order to simulate fully multifunctional synthetic vascular materials, the model permits the solid and fluid phases to exchange mass, momentum and energy. Balance equations and the entropy inequality for general mixtures are taken from existing continuum mixture theory. These are augmented with certain definite types of solid-fluid interactions in order to enable adequately general, but workable, engineering analysis. The thermomechanical characteristics of this restricted class of multifunctional materials are delineated. By demanding that the law of increase of entropy be satisfied for all processes, much is deduced about the acceptable forms of constitutive equations. The paper concludes with a study of the uniaxial tension behavior of an idealized vascular material.