Representative volume element size determination for viscoplastic properties in polycrystalline materials

Influence of representative volume element size on predicted elastic properties of polymer materials

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and micromechanical modeling are used to predict the bulk-level Young’s modulus of polycarbonate and polyimide polymer systems as a function of representative volume element (RVE) size and force field type. The bulk-level moduli are determined using the predicted moduli of individual finite-sized RVEs (microstates) using a simple averaging scheme and an energ...

Effect of Carbon Nanotube Geometries on Mechanical Properties of Nanocomposite Via Nanoscale Representative Volume Element

Predicting the effective elastic properties of carbon nanotube-reinforced nanocomposites is of great interest to many structural designers and engineers for improving material and configuration design in recent years. In this paper, a finite element model of a CNT composite has been developed using the Representative volume element (RVE) to evaluate the effective material properties of nanocomp...

Finite Element-Based Model for Crack Propagation in Polycrystalline Materials∗

In this paper, we use an extended form of the finite element method to study failure in polycrystalline microstructures. Quasi-static crack propagation is conducted using the extended finite element method (X-FEM) and microstructures are simulated using a kinetic Monte Carlo Potts algorithm. In the X-FEM, the framework of partition of unity is used to enrich the classical finite element approxi...

Finite element analysis of 2-D representative volume element

Determination of the Size of Representative Volume Elements for Discontinuous Fibre Composites

Discontinuous fibre composites can be rapidly manufactured using automated processes, with low production costs compared with textile reinforcements [1]. The level of flexibility offered by discontinuous fibre composites can however make efficient design challenging, as additional material and process parameters complicate material selection and quality can be difficult to control compared with...