Multi-scale modeling of carbon nanotube reinforced polymers using irregular tessellation technique

Abstract

A multi-scale modeling approach to extract mechanical properties of CNTRP emphasizing on the effective parameters associated with meso- and micro-scale is developed. Investigated material region at macro scale is regularly tessellated into constitutive blocks. Assigning random CNT volume fractions to each block, non-uniform dispersion of CNT is modeled. Irregular tessellation technique based on Voronoi method and Bayes algorithm is employed to partition the RVE at meso scale into constitutive polygons containing one single aggregated CNTs. Mechanical properties of the tessellated regions are extracted by a modified micromechanics rules addressing local positions of aggregates in the material region. A bounding technique accounting for non-straight shape of CNT is utilized to consider any arbitrary shapes of wavy CNT. The obtained results of modeling are compared with experimental observations. A novel formulation is developed taking into account all inconsistencies attributed to CNTRPs.