Abstract
In the present work, we propose to confront two modeling techniques for predicting the macroscopic properties of short alfa fiber-reinforced polypropylene composites. The first modeling was a micromechanical analysis using the Mori-Tanaka, Self-consistent, Diluted, Voigt, Reuss, and Neerfeld-Hill models. The second modeling was digital, using a specific finite element technique called the Projected Fiber (PF) approach. In the framework of this study, both 2D and 3D finite element analyses based on the PF approach were used. First, we proposed an inverse approach using these analytical and finite element models to predict the Young’s modulus of alfa fiber. Then, we compared the obtained results with the experiment values available in the literature. This comparison showed that the micromechanical models underestimated the alfa fiber’s Young’s modulus, while the finite element approach, PF, allowed for good framing of the experimental values. Moreover, we investigated the effect of fiber content on the predicted elastic properties of a polypropylene (PP) matrix reinforced with randomly distributed short alfa fibers. We noticed that the Diluted model was more accurate than the Mori-Tanaka and Self-consistent methods. As for the PF approach, its estimations were close to the experimental values. For example, the Young’s modulus for the PP/alfa with a 30 wt% of fiber content was underestimated with an error of 4.3%. It is shown that the 2D PF approach can provide calculated results with sufficient prediction accuracy.
Highlights
For composites with randomly dispersed short fibers, the well-known micromechanical homogenization models in the literature are analytical
In order to compare the results obtained by the Projected Fiber (PF) approach to the experimental values of the tensile test, we chose the boundary conditions of the representative volume element (RVE) so as to simulate a tensile α cos α
In order to compare the results obtained by the PF approach to the experimental values of the tensile test, we chose the boundary conditions of the RVE so as to simulate a tensile test
Summary
For composites with randomly dispersed short fibers, the well-known micromechanical homogenization models in the literature are analytical. Burczynski and Kus [16] analyzed composites reinforced with continuous fibers They combined finite element analysis based homogenization with an evolutionary algorithm to conduct multiscale modeling. We propose to identify the effective elastic properties of a thermoplastic matrix (i.e., polypropylene (PP)) reinforced with short alfa fibers using analytical homogenization models and by finite element analysis. To this end, we used the projected fiber approach as well as the most well-known micromechanical models in the literature, namely, Voigt and Reuss, Neerfeld-Hill, Mori-Tanaka, the diluted model, and the self-consistent, which we implemented using MATLAB software. We studied the effect of the volume fraction on the Young’s modulus for the studied composites by considering the developed analytical and numerical models
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