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A parallel‐supercomputing investigation of the stiffness of aligned, short‐fiber‐reinforced composites using the Boundary Element Method
Author(s) -
Ingber M. S.,
Papathanasiou T. D.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
international journal for numerical methods in engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.421
H-Index - 168
eISSN - 1097-0207
pISSN - 0029-5981
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-0207(19970930)40:18<3477::aid-nme225>3.0.co;2-b
Subject(s) - supercomputer , composite material , materials science , stiffness , boundary element method , fiber reinforced composite , finite element method , fiber , structural engineering , parallel computing , computer science , engineering
Computational experiments are carried out in three‐dimensional, multi‐fibre specimens with the objective of determining the influence of fibre volume fraction (ϕ) and aspect ratio ( a r ) on the effective tensile modulus of aligned, discontinuous fibre‐reinforced composites. The Boundary Element Method (BEM), implemented on a 1840‐node Intel Paragon parallel supercomputer using a torus‐wrap mapping, enables the prediction of the tensile behaviour of composite specimens consisting of up to 200 discrete aligned short fibres, randomly dispersed in an elastic matrix. Statistical averages of the computed effective longitudinal moduli are compared with the predictions of the Halpin–Tsai equation and are found to be in good agreement for low values of a r and ϕ. However, as a r and/or ϕ increase, the predictions of the Halpin–Tsai equation fall below the computed moduli. Consideration of the finite packing efficiency of the fibres as proposed by Lewis and Nielsen results in a generalized form of the Halpin–Tsai equation whose predictions are in very good agreement with the BEM calculations for the entire range of ϕ and a r examined. The scatter in the computed moduli decreases with increasing number of fibres, reflecting the ‘homogenization’ of the specimen brought about by consideration of larger numbers of smaller fibres. This scatter grows with increasing ϕ and a r , reflecting an increase in the magnitude and complexity of inter‐fibre interactions. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.