Effects of two damage mechanisms on effective elastic properties of particulate composites

This study focuses on development of a method for predicting effective elastic properties of damaged particulate polymer composites. Two damage parameters were introduced and defined by volume fraction of both the void-damage and the debonding-damage. The former parameter was determined by 3-dimensional strain measurement of damaged composite samples, while the latter were estimated from a typical experimental data of the repeatedly load-unload tensile tests. Based on M-T micro-mechanics theory, the equations for estimation of the effective elastic properties of the damaged particulate composites in response to the longitudinal true uni-axial strain were formulated The effects of two damage mechanisms and glass-bead contents on the effective elastic properties of glass bead filled polyphenylene oxide (GB/PPO) composites were investigated by this approach. The predicted results for the effective elastic modulus were close to the experimental data. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.