Effective conductivity of matrix composites and foam materials by self-consistent field method using commercial FEA software

Abstract

The paper is dedicated to the numerical determination of the physical fields in matrix composite materials and foams and their effective properties. The main attention is paid to the comparative analysis of using the Lagrangian Finite Elements Analysis (FEA) and the class of Gaussian approximation used by the author earlier for the numerical solution of the problem. It is intended in the paper to show that the commercial FEA software is an effective practical solver for the calculation of the physical field in the RVE of composite materials and foams and accurate enough for determination of the effective conductive properties of composites. In the paper, results of commercial FEA calculations are compared with results obtained earlier by other methods and experimental data. The results and analysis presented in the paper may be interested for the wide cycle of researchers dealing with numerical solution of the homogenization problem and the paper contains some new informative material.