Computational evaluation of effective material properties of composites reinforced by randomly distributed spherical particles

The aim of presenting this paper is to evaluate the effective material properties of spherical particle reinforced composites for different volume fractions up to 60%. A numerical homogenization technique based on the finite element method (FEM) with representative volume element (RVE) was used to evaluate the effective material properties with periodic boundary conditions. The numerical approach is based on the FEM and it allows the extension of the composites with arbitrary geometrical inclusion configurations, providing a powerful tool for fast calculation of their effective material properties. Modified random sequential adsorption algorithm (RSA) was used to generate the three-dimensional RVE models of randomly distributed spherical particles. The effective material properties obtained using the numerical homogenization techniques were compared with different analytical methods and good agreement was achieved. Several investigations had been conducted to estimate the influence of the size of spherical particles and of the RVE on effective material properties of spherical particle reinforced composites. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.