Investigation of effective material properties in composites with internal defect or reinforcement particles

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the investigation of the effective material properties of internally defective or particle-reinforced composites. An analysis was carried out with a novel method using, the two-dimensional special finite element method mixing the concept of equivalent homogeneous materials. A formulation has been developed for a series of special finite elements containing an internal defect or reinforcement in order to assure the high accuracy especially in the vicinity of defects or reinforcements. The adoption of the special finite element can greatly simplify numerical modeling of particle-composites. The numerical result provides the effective material properties of particle-reinforced composite and explains that the size of particles has great influence on the material properties. Numerical examples also demonstrate the validity and versatility of the proposed method by comparing with existing results from literatures. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.