Cross-Property Relations between Mechanical and Transport Properties of Composite Materials

Abstract

Cross-property relations are established in this paper between transport and mechanical properties of two-phase composite materials. In particular, the cross-property relations among the effective thermal conductivity (or chemical diffusivity), effective shear, and effective bulk moduli of two-phase composites are developed. Conventional isotropic composite mechanics models are employed to obtain effective properties of composite materials. The effective properties are expressed in terms of volume fraction of the inclusions, and then the volume fraction is used as the link to develop the expressions for the cross-property correlations. The present method can be used together with the recently developed composite damage mechanics method for evaluating cross-property correlations of distressed materials. Because mechanical properties of distressed materials have been investigated extensively, the cross-property relations provide a powerful method for evaluating transport properties of distressed materials without sophisticated experiments. Two numerical examples are shown for the cross-property correlations of distressed concrete under two-dimensional loading, where the isotropic damage is governed. Correct trends were obtained for the two numerical examples.