Abstract
In particle or short-fiber reinforced composites, cracking of reinforcements is a significant damage mode because the cracked reinforcements lose load carrying capacity. This paper deals with elastic stress distributions and load carrying capacity of intact and cracked ellipsoidal inhomogeneities. Axisymmetric finite element analysis has been carried out on intact and cracked ellipsoidal inhomogeneities in an infinite body under uniaxial tension. For the intact inhomogeneity, as well known as Eshelby's solution(1957), the stress distribution is uniform in the inhomogeneity and nonuniform in the surrounding matrix. On the other hand, for the cracked inhomogeneity, the stress in the region near the crack surface is considerably released and the stress distribution becomes more complex. The average stress in the inhomogeneity represents its load carrying capacity, and the difference between the average stresses of the intact and cracked inhomogeneities indicates the loss of load carrying capacity due to cracking damage. The load carrying capacity of the cracked inhomogeneity is expressed in terms of the average stress of the intact inhomogeneity and some coefficients. The coefficients are given as functions of an aspect ratio for a variety of combinations of the elastic moduli of inhomogeneity and matrix. It is found that a cracked inhomogeneity with high aspect ratio maintains higher load carrying capacity than one with low aspect ratio.
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