Elastoplastic constitutive relations for fiber-reinforced solids (Q1262022)

The authors study the effective constitutive behavior of ductile, fiber- reinforced composites. Both estimates and rigorous bounds are obtained for the effective energy functions of multiphase, fiber composites with general ductile behaviors for the isotropic constituent phases. The resulting expressions for the energy functions might be differentiated in a straightforward manner to obtain corresponding estimates for the anisotropic effective stress-strain relations. The authors carry out the calculations for the case of an aluminium matrix composite reinforced with boron fibers. The results reveal some interesting features distinguishing the constitutive behavior of ductile matrix, filter- reinforced composites from that of linear-elastic, fiber-reinforced composites. They show that one such a feature is the strong coupling between the dilatational and distortional modes for ductile fiber composites. The authors also compare their results with existing experimental data. This work is quite interesting and might be very useful for researchers working in the area of fiber-reinforced composites.