Stiffness and thermal expansion of short fiber composites with fully aligned fibers

The stiffness and thermal expansion of short fiber composites with fully aligned fibers was discussed. The numerical procedure of Gusav was used for the first principle predictions of the overall elastic constants and thermal expansion coefficients of composites with fully aligned fibers, both isotropic (glass) and anistropic (carbon). It was found that Gusev procedure gave excellent predictions for both highly aligned continous fiber composites and misaligned injection moulded short fiber composites.