Scale and boundary conditions effects on elastic properties of random composites (Q5943962)

This paper studies apparent anti-plane (axial shear) elastic moduli (moduli calculated at scales smaller than the representative volume element - RVE) of unidirectional composites with cylindrical fibers of circular shape, aligned in the axial direction, and arranged randomly with no overlap in the transverse plane. The effects of scale and boundary conditions on elastic moduli by employing mesoscale continuum-type models are examines numericaly. The so-called ``windows of observation'' are used on scales larger than a single fiber, yet smaller than RVE in the sense of Hill. The random fields are specified via \(n\)-point probability distributions, and a scale-dependent hierarchy structure of apparent properties is found. To the mesoscale windows the authors apply different types of boundary conditions. In particular, they use displacement- and traction-controlled conditions in Hill's definition, periodic boundary conditions, and mixed boundary conditions involving combinations of the first three boundary conditions. The numerical analysis uses a spring network discretization of the composite in its transverse plane for a range of fiber-matrix moduli mismatches and several volume fractions. The authors employ a conjugate gradient method with respect to the total energy (the sum of energies stored in all the spring bonds) under above boundary conditions. The number of samples chosen in the study for each window size is sufficient for obtaining second-order statistics. The numerical results confirm that the scale-dependent bounds stemming from displacement and traction boundary conditions, become closer as the window size increases. The results obtained for displacement and traction boundary conditions are more sensitive to the window size than the results obtained for all other boundary conditions. The coefficient of variation of the apparent elastic modulus decreases as the window size increases. Finally, the coefficient of variation, measuring the degree of anisotropy, is insensitive to changing scale and stiffness mismatch for displacement and traction boundary conditions.