Wang Wenzhi, Dai Yonghui, Zhang Chao, Gao Xiaosheng, Zhao Meiying
School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnic University, Xi'an 710072, China.
Shanghai Aircraft Customer Service Co., Ltd., Shanghai 200241, China.
Materials (Basel). 2016 Jul 27;9(8):624. doi: 10.3390/ma9080624.
Modeling the random fiber distribution of a fiber-reinforced composite is of great importance for studying the progressive failure behavior of the material on the micro scale. In this paper, we develop a new algorithm for generating random representative volume elements (RVEs) with statistical equivalent fiber distribution against the actual material microstructure. The realistic statistical data is utilized as inputs of the new method, which is archived through implementation of the probability equations. Extensive statistical analysis is conducted to examine the capability of the proposed method and to compare it with existing methods. It is found that the proposed method presents a good match with experimental results in all aspects including the nearest neighbor distance, nearest neighbor orientation, Ripley's K function, and the radial distribution function. Finite element analysis is presented to predict the effective elastic properties of a carbon/epoxy composite, to validate the generated random representative volume elements, and to provide insights of the effect of fiber distribution on the elastic properties. The present algorithm is shown to be highly accurate and can be used to generate statistically equivalent RVEs for not only fiber-reinforced composites but also other materials such as foam materials and particle-reinforced composites.
对纤维增强复合材料的随机纤维分布进行建模，对于在微观尺度上研究材料的渐进失效行为具有重要意义。在本文中，我们针对实际材料微观结构开发了一种新算法，用于生成具有统计等效纤维分布的随机代表性体积单元（RVE）。利用通过概率方程实现所存档的实际统计数据作为新方法的输入。进行了广泛的统计分析，以检验所提方法的能力，并将其与现有方法进行比较。结果发现，所提方法在最近邻距离、最近邻取向、Ripley's K函数和径向分布函数等所有方面均与实验结果呈现出良好的匹配。进行了有限元分析，以预测碳/环氧复合材料的有效弹性性能，验证所生成的随机代表性体积单元，并深入了解纤维分布对弹性性能的影响。结果表明，本算法具有很高的准确性，不仅可用于生成纤维增强复合材料的统计等效RVE，还可用于生成泡沫材料和颗粒增强复合材料等其他材料的统计等效RVE。
