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.

Glass reinforced thermosetting composite materials are now widely usUUed in building and construction applications. However, the adoption of Boron and Kevlar based composite materials in this industry has been very slow, and the main reasons are lack of previous experiences to assess the durability of such composite products and understanding of their properties by designers. In order to fill t...

A micromechanical analysis of the unit cell of a unidirectional hybrid composite is performed using finite element method. The fibers are assumed to be circular and packed in a hexagonal array. The effects of volume fractions of the two different fibers used and also their relative locations within the unit cell are studied. The failure envelopes of the hybrid composites are developed from the ...

Woven fabrics prove to be a very convenient fibre reinforcement when prepreg layers have to be draped on to double curvature moulds. The process of draping causes the angle between the warp and weft yarns to vary over the product with this double curvature. As a result, the thermomechanical properties of the fibre reinforced composite material show a corresponding distribution. These thermo-ela...

The purpose of this paper is to present a simple micromechanics-based model to estimate the effective thermal conductivity of macroscopically isotropic materials of matrix-inclusion type. The methodology is based on the well-established Mori-Tanaka method for composite media reinforced with ellipsoidal inclusions, extended to account for imperfect thermal contact at the matrix-inclusion interfa...

In this paper, a multiscale method is developed to predict Young's modulus of fullerene-reinforced polymer nanocomposites (FRPNs). Polymethyl methacrylate chosen as the matrix, while C60 fullerene considered reinforcement. First, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are conducted calculate Young nanocomposite unit cell with different weight fractions fullerene. Then, micromechanics model for com...