Font Size: 

A robust micromechanics tool called generalized Locally Exact Homogenization Theory (LEHT) is developed in studying the multiphysics behavior of fibrous composites under mechanical loading or thermal and moisture environment. Starting from characterizing microstructural repeating unit cells (RUCs), the generalized LEHT adopts the Trefftz concept where the internal functions are explicitly represented through series expansions and proposes a balanced variational principle to impose periodic boundary conditions. Relative to the classical micromechanics models that adopt mean-field assumption, we can accurately not only generate the effective response but also recover the localized stress concentrations or electrical fields within microstructures, which are importantly in indicating the possible crack initiations around inhomogeneities. We are also more advantageous than the finite-element based numerical methods in the sense that we avoid the internal mesh discretization and pre-/post-processing and thus significantly improve the computational efficiency. More importantly, we encapsulate our programs into a blackbox with only input/output (I/O), where the professionals or even non-professionals can use this technique without even learning the mathematical details.