Analysis of effective elastic properties of unidirectional boron fiber-reinforced plastic by a generalized self-consistent method

Abstract

A new generalized self-consisrtent method is developed for the statistical mechanics of composites which makes it possible to reduce the problem of predicting the effective elastic properties of composites with random structures to solution of a simpler ‘averaged’ problem of an inclusion with a transitional layer in a material with the effective elastic properties sought. The typical size of the transition layer is determined by the correlation radius of the random structure, and its elastic properties are considered as both the ‘close’ order of the mutual position and the variation of inclusion dimensions in terms of a special averaged indicator function of the structure. A numerical calculation is presented by the generalized self-consistent method for the average indicator function and the transversely-isotropic tensor for effective elastic properties of unidirectional boron fiber-reinforced plastic based on different models for actual random structure in the plane of isotropy. Analysis of the numerical results compared with experimental data and known solutions of other authors demonstrates the high accuracy of the generalized self-consistent method for a broad class of random composite structures.