Improved Bounds on the Effective Elastic Moduli of Random Arrays of Cylinders

Improved rigorous bounds on the effective elastic moduli of a transversely isotropic fiber-reinforced material composed of aligned, infinitely long, equisized, circular cylinders distributed throughout a matrix are evaluated for cylinder volume fractions up to 70 percent. The bounds are generally shown to provide significant improvement over the Hill-Hashin bounds which incorporate only volume-fraction information. For cases in which the cylinders are stiffer than the matrix, the improved lower bounds provide relatively accurate estimates of the elastic moduli, even when the upper bound diverges from it (i.e., when the cylinders are substantially stiffer than the matrix). This last statement is supported by accurate, recently obtained Monte Carlo computer-simulation data of the true effective axial shear modulus.