Conductivity and elastic stiffness of spherical particle composite with partially disordered microstructure

Abstract

The spherical particle composite with the microstructure varying from perfectly ordered to completely disordered is considered. The partially disordered periodic packings of spheres are generated in the framework of the reprehensive unit cell model with aid of the Metropolis algorithm. The orientation order invariants Qi introduced by Steinhardt et al. [Phys. Rev. B 28 (1983) 784] in the molecular physics context are taken as the structural parameters providing a quantitative measure of disorder. Variation of these parameters due to gradual disordering of the cubic symmetry packings has been studied by means of computer simulation. The effective conductivity and elastic moduli of the spherical particle composites with partially disordered periodic microstructure is found by the multipole expansion method. Numerical study discovers a close relationship between the order metrics and macroscopic properties of composite. The micromechanics-prompted approximation of this relationship is suggested and tested on the numerical data obtained by computer simulation.