Abstract
Abstract Current technology provides means of fabrication of spherical micro-particles, either hollow or compact, for all sorts of engineering materials. Such spherical particles can be further embedded into another material to build up either random dispersions or close-packed arrays, according to the production route and the degree of anisotropy intended for the ultimate composite material. In this study, a simple analytical formula for the composite stiffness is derived from an early micromechanics model to describe the actual reinforcement of ductile matrices by a random dispersion of uniform spherical ceramic particles. Predictions from this model are checked against some other relevant models, and specific features arising from its theoretical derivation are pointed out. The basic model can also predict the stiffness of syntactic composites, whose reinforcements are hollow microsphere dispersions. An application of this new model is demonstrated for the assessment of the ductility of brittle composites reinforced by compact spherical particles.
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