Microstructure-Based Computational Modeling of Mechanical Behavior of Polymer Micro/Nano Composites.

摘要

Lightweight advanced materials are critical in the manufacturing of many Army vehicles. Recently, numerical tools have been utilized to customize experiments to achieve optimized behavior of micro/nano polymer composites (MNPCs). Most numerical studies are based on characterizing the MNPCs through simple microstructures, as circular particles or straight fibers embedded in a specific polymer matrix. Although these geometries are effective in virtually modeling some types of composite material behavior, they fail to address some critical key micro-structural features. First, they fail to properly address the randomness of particles. Second, 2D analyses have limitations and they can provide qualitative insight, rather than evaluate the quantitative response of the material behavior. Thus, in order to fill this gap, a user friendly software program was developed to generate 2D and 3D RVEs (representative volume elements) to precisely represent the morphology of material in microstructural level. Rate- and time-dependent damage (viscodamage) is separately considered to fully investigate the initiation and growth of damage. The available viscoelastic and viscoplastic models are extended to large strain framework. Numerous simulations were conducted to predict the overall responses of micro/nano composites with different morphologies.