Numerical investigation of microstructure effect on mechanical properties of bi-continuous and particulate reinforced composite materials

In this paper, numerical simulations are proposed to investigate mechanical properties of bi-continuous and particulate reinforced composite materials using a non-local voxel-based discrete computational model. Special focus of this article is the effect of 3D microstructure and its heterogeneity on elastic deformation and fracture behaviors. First, a review on model formulation is presented. Model parameters are derived in terms of material constants using the concept of energy equivalency. Interface representation and numerical homogenization scheme are discussed. Following this, numerical investigations on the effects of interface properties and inclusion characteristics, i.e. the volume fraction and material constants, on homogenized elastic constants and fracture behaviors of statistically isotropic bi-phase composites are performed. The effective elastic constants predicted by the proposed model agree well with analytical results. Fracture simulation demonstrates good capability of the proposed model for the microstructure-sensitive failure analysis. Conclusions and future work are drawn based on the proposed study.