Fiber Reinforcement

The fiber reinforcement material model enables you to specify the properties of one or more fiber constituents in a fiber-reinforced composite material.

You can define the material properties of the matrix constituent of the composite using a different material behavior. The properties of the matrix are undefined in the fiber reinforcement material model. You also specify various parameters to define a semianalytical homogenization approach to compute the thermal and mechanical properties of the composite material.

The fiber reinforcement material option:

  • supports one or more fiber reinforcements
  • supports fiber behaviors whose mechanical response can be modeled using a linear elastic response only
  • supports specification of expansion, thermal conductivity, and density of each fiber reinforcement
  • requires you to provide the homogenization data, the number of fiber reinforcements, the fiber geometric and orientation data, and the material data for each reinforcement
  • uses formulations based on Eshelby's solution and
  • can predict volume-averaged microlevel solutions in each constituent of the composite