Large Scale Analysis of Mechanical Properties in 3D Fiber-Reinforced Composites Using a New Fast Multipole Boundary Element Method

摘要

We present a new boundary element method (BEM) for numerical analysis concerning local and overall mechanical properties of 3D fiber-reinforced composites. The BEM is accelerated by a new version fast multipole method (FMM) in order to perform large scale simulation of a finite elastic domain containing up to several hundred randomly distributed and oriented elastic fibers on only one personal computer. The maximum number of degrees of freedom (DOFs) reaches above 400,000. Efficiency of the developed new version fast multopole BEM code is tested in comparison with other solvers for BEM. The effects of various micro-structural parameters, namely the fiber aspect ratio, fiber volume fraction, fiber/matrix moduli ratio and fiber orientation on local stress fields and the effective elastic moduli of fiber-reinforced composites are evaluated. The numerical results show that fast multipole BEM is suitable for large scale simulation of fiber-reinforced composites and could be a valuable tool for deeper understanding of both micro and macro mechanical behavior of such composites, when the fibers and matrix are assumed to be elastic. Based on the present work, future investigations will concern simulation on brittle fracture process.