Evaluation of the Tensile Strength of Unidirectional Fiber Reinforced Metals by Monte-Carlo Simulation : Application of Finite Element Method

Abstract

A Monte-Carlo simulation method for evaluating the tensile strength of the unidirectional fiber reinforced metal matrix composites is proposed on the basis of the elastic-plastic finite element method. In this simulation model, the two one-dimensional line elements representing the reinforcing fibers are incorporated into two sides along the y-axis of a 4-nodes isoparametric element (plane stress), which represents the metal matrix. Furthermore, for estimating reasonably each element stress increment necessary to the fiber-break, the γ_min method is applied to the simulation procedure. This simulation is performed for boron/alumium composite monolayer. The simulated result shows the larger stress concentration around the broken fiber than that of the previously proposed simulation by means of the shear-lag model. Therefore, the former simulation lowers the mean values of tensile strength and increases its scatter, as compared with the later. Such a statistical tendency is in good agreement with the results obtained by comparing the previous experiment with the shear-lag simulation method.