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Corresponding Author

Shady, Ebraheem

Subject Area

Textile Engineering

Article Type

Original Study

Abstract

Short fiber reinforced polymer composites (SFRC) are used widely in industrial applications. It is imperative to have analytical expression that is able to predict elastic properties of composite materials instead of manufacturing and testing the materials. Having such expression saves efforts and time when designing composite materials. In addition, the analytical expression will enable examining the effects of some parameters on the elastic properties of composite materials. In this work, an analytical model is adopted to predict elastic properties of short fiber reinforced polymer composite. The fibers are considered aligned and randomly oriented in the matrix. The model is based on the modified Mori-Tanaka approach along with a randomization procedure. The model is verified by comparing its results to experimental data from literature. The model results that consider the random orientation of fibers agree well with the experimental data. Thereafter, the model is used to perform a case study to elucidate the effect of fiber volume fraction and fiber's aspect ratio on the elastic properties of the composite material. The results show that increasing fiber volume fraction leads to nonlinear increase in both elastic and shear moduli and non linear decrease in Poisson's ratio. The study shows insignificant effect of changing fiber's aspect ratio on the elastic properties of composite materials.

Keywords

Short fiber; polymer composites; Random orientation; Elastic modulus; aspect ratio

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