抄録
Composite materials have potential of designing their mechanical properties. However, this advantage is not fully utilized in the design and application of present composite materials. One of the reason for this situation is that the relation between microscopic properties of components such as fiber and matrix, and the macroscopic composite strength is understood only at a qualitative level. During deformation and fracture behavior of fiber reinforced composites, various events such as premature failure of fibers, interfacial debonding, fiber bridging, matrix fracture etc. occur. Interfacial strength and the geometrical arrangement of fibers and matrix affect these events. These events and structures are called mesoscopic events and mesoscopic structure. The mechanics which describes the mesoscopic events, the effect of mesoscopic structure, and total contribution of a number of mesoscopic events to the overall behavior of macroscopic composites is called mesomechanics. Mesomechanics has further potential to increase the mechanical properties of composites by controlling the mesoscopic structures. In the present paper, the importance of the contribution of mesoscopic structure on the overall composite behavior is addressed, and then the possibility of mesomechanics is described.
