The modeling and determination of dynamic elastic modulus of magnesium based metal matrix composites

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to determine elastic modulus of the magnesium-based composites containing different volume fraction of SiC particulates using an innovative free-free beam type impact based technique. This technique is based on classical vibration theory, by which the geometry and material properties of the metal matrix composites are related to resonant frequency of the test specimen. With the fundamental resonant frequency obtained from the experiment and density determined by the Archimedes' principle, the elastic modulus values were determined. In addition, a finite element model is proposed for different SiC weight percentage samples for the determination of dynamic elastic modulus using the first natural frequency corresponding to the flexural mode. The elastic modulus values obtained using finite element method were found to be in close agreement with the values obtained from the impact based experiments and in better agreement when compared to theoretical methods such as Halpin-Tsai method. Both the theoretical approaches, in common, exhibit the increasing trend of elastic modulus value with an increase in weight percentage of SiC particulates.