A Comparative study on the Effect of Representative Volume Cell (RVC) Boundary Conditions on the Elastic Properties of a Micromechanics Based Unidirectional Composite Material Model

摘要

A micromechanical model based on the physically viable sub-cell boundary conditions is developed and implemented for use with uni-directional composite laminates in the explicit finite element method. Stress-strain relations have been presented in a three-dimensional context and hence can be used with solid elements. The objective of this work is to study the effect of boundary conditions in accurately estimating the elastic properties of a uni-directional composite lamina. In order to achieve this, the developed micro-model has been studied alongside 2 other models with different boundary conditions specified in the literature. Numerical results are generated for engineering constants by the considered models and compared against each other for different laminas. In particular, transverse and shear modulus have been analyzed in detail alongside popular analytical methods and verified against available experimental results for various volume fractions. Good agreements have been observed for the presented model in comparison with the experimental results.