Micromechanics of Electro- and Magneto-active Soft Composites

Advance In Micromechanics Analysis of Piezoelectric Composites

This paper presents an overview of micromechanics analysis of piezoelectric composites. Developments in micromechanics algorithms, finite element, and boundary element formulation for predicting effective material properties of piezoelectric composites are described. Finally, a brief summary of the approaches discussed is provided and future trends in this field are identified.

Temperature-related effective properties and exact relations for thermo-magneto-electro-elastic fibrous composites

Two-phase periodic thermo-magneto-electro-elastic composites are considered. The composite materials consisting of identical parallel cylindrical fibers periodically distributed in a matrix. Both constituents are transversely isotropic and the unit-cell has rhomboidal shape. Based on the asymptotic homogenization method, exact relations involving the in-plane effective coefficients are derived ...

The Micromechanics of Biological and Biomimetic Staggered Composites

Natural materials such as bone, tooth and nacre achieve attractive properties through the “staggered structure”, which consists of stiff, parallel inclusions of large aspect ratio bonded together by a more ductile and tougher matrix. This seemingly simple structure displays sophisticated micromechanics which lead to unique combinations of stiffness, strength and toughness. In this article we mo...

Non-linear micromechanics of soft tissues.

Microstructure-based constitutive models have been adopted in recent studies of non-linear mechanical properties of biological soft tissues. These models provide more accurate predictions of the overall mechanical responses of tissues than phenomenological approaches. Based on standard approximations in non-linear mechanics, we classified the microstructural models into three categories: (1) un...

Visualization of magnetization processes of soft magnetic composites by the magneto-optical imaging technique