Dispersion of rigid line inclusions as stiffeners and shear band instability triggers

A dispersion of stiff and thin (‘rigid line’) inclusions (RLIs) in a matrix material may result beneficial for stiffening in the elastic range, but might be detrimental to strength, as material instabilities may be triggered by inclusions when the matrix is brought to a viscoplastic-damaging state. This dual role of RLIs is investigated by...

Calcium phosphate cement reinforced with poly (vinyl alcohol) fibers: An experimental and numerical failure analysis

Calcium phosphate cements (CPCs) have been widely used during the past decades as biocompatible bone substitution in maxillofacial, oral and orthopedic surgery. CPCs are injectable and are chemically resemblant to the mineral phase of native bone. Nevertheless, their low fracture toughness and high brittleness reduce their clinical...

Fiber neutrality in fiber-reinforced composites: Evidence from a computational study

We report numerical evidence for neutrality of thin fibers to a prescribed uniform stress field in a fiber-reinforced composite. Elastic finite element analyses of fiber-reinforced composites are carried out with a conventional fully-resolved model and a novel dimensionally-reduced fiber model.The two modeling approaches are compared in the...

Diameter-dependent elastic properties of carbon nanotube-polymer composites: Emergence of size effects from atomistic-scale simulations

We propose a computational procedure to assess size effects in nonfunctionalized single-walled carbon nanotube (CNT)-polymer composites. The procedure upscales results obtained with atomistic simulations on a composite unit cell with one CNT to an equivalent continuum composite model with a large number of CNTs. Molecular dynamics simulations...