Analysis of fibrous elastic composites with nonuniform imperfect adhesion

Abstract

In most composites, the fiber–matrix adhesion is imperfect; the continuity conditions for stresses and displacements are not satisfied. In this contribution, effective elastic moduli are obtained by means of the asymptotic homogenization method (AHM), for three-phase fibrous composites (matrix/mesophase/fiber) with parallelogram periodic cell. Interaction between fiber and matrix is considered, and this is called the mesophase model where the nonuniform mesophase is studied. Besides, there is another type of matrix–fiber contact which is called nonuniform spring imperfect contact. In this case, the contrast or jump of the displacements in the boundary of each phase is proportional to the corresponding component of the tension in the interface in terms of a parameter given by a certain function that depends on the position. The constituents of the composites exhibit transversely isotropic properties. A doubly periodic parallelogram array of cylindrical inclusions under longitudinal shear is considered. The three-phase model is validated by the Finite Element Method and the AHM both approaches applied to two-phase composites with nonuniform spring imperfect contact. Comparisons with theoretical and experimental results verified that the present model is efficient for the analysis of composites with presence of nonuniform imperfect interface and parallelogram cell. The effect of the nonuniform imperfection on the shear effective property is observed. The present method can provide benchmark results for other numerical and approximate methods.