Effective Properties Evaluation for Multifunctional Composite Materials

Abstract

Multifunctional composites have great potential for applications in aerospace and automobile domains. This work aims at evaluating the properties of an RVE model consisting of a carbon fiber at the core encompassed with a layer of piezoelectric material which are embedded in epoxy resin. The carbon fibers act as a reinforcement to perform the primary functionalities (strength and stability) as a structural member while the piezoelectric layer provides sensing and actuations. With the aid of Representative volume elements, using finite element analysis we can homogenize the model equivalent to that of an original composite. The appropriate boundary conditions allow the simulation of various configuration of models to deform when multiple arbitrary combination of electrical and mechanical loadings were applied and to predict effective material coefficients of circular and square cross sectional fibers. The comparison of results with different combination of fiber geometries and unit cells can be observed.Keywords: Representative volume elements (RVE), Multifunctional Composites, Effective properties, Piezoelectric material, Finite Element analysis.