Micromechanical Modeling of Particulate-filled Composites Using X-ray Computed Tomography

Abstract

Glass fillers with different shape and mass fractions were considered to demonstrate the wide range of applicability of micro-CT imaging. It is shown that micro-CT technique can be used to create realistic RVEs for two-phase particulatefilled composite materials removing the need to use artificial computer algorithms to distribute and orient 3-D inclusions randomly. Solution methods are proposed to the encountered problems during reconstruction of micro-CT imaging. In addition, effective properties are calculated and contributions of different parameters on effective elastic properties are evaluated. Three different shapes of glass fillers (spherical, flake, and fiber) and filler mass fractions (5%, 10%, and 15%) were introduced to epoxy resin. Voxel-based RVEs were created from binary segmentation of images taken from micro-CT. Geometry-based RVEs were created after reconstruction of voxel-based RVEs to eliminate the stepped-like appearance of nonorthogonal interfaces. These RVE’s were then used in the finite element analysis to find the effective mechanical properties such as Young’s modulus, shear modulus, Poisson’s ratio of the samples. In order to assess the numerical findings, compression tests were performed.