On a numerical strategy to simulate nanotube-reinforced composite materials

Abstract

The application of carbon nanotubes as the reinforcing phase in composite materials is considered. A literature review in regards to the simulation approaches that have been done in order to study the behavior of nanotube-reinforced composites from several aspects is provided. After that, a new approach for investigating the mechanical properties of the composites reinforced with randomly oriented fibers using the finite element method is proposed. The main idea is to create regular shaped islands around the distributed fibers and to connect these islands to each other and to the representative volume element. Two application examples show the flexibility and the reliability of the proposed method. It has been shown that this approach can handle both aligned and arbitrary distributions of the nanotubes.