Open Access

ARTICLE

Evaluation of Effective Material Parameters of CNT-reinforced Composites via 3D BEM

F.C. Araújo¹, L.J. Gray²

1 Dept Civil Eng, UFOP, Ouro Preto, MG, Brazil; visitor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, TN, U.S.A.
2 Oak Ridge National Laboratory, TN, U.S.A

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2008, 24(2&3), 103-122. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmes.2008.024.103

Abstract

In recent years, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been widely employed to build advanced composites. In this work, a Boundary Element Method (BEM) is applied to 3D representative volume elements (RVEs) to estimate mechanical properties of CNT-based composites. To model the thin-walled nanotubes, special integration procedures for calculating nearly-strongly-singular integrals have been developed. The generic BE substructuring algorithm allows modeling complex CNT-reinforced polymers, containing any number of nanotubes of any shape (straight or curved). The subregion-by-subregion strategy, based on Krylov solvers, makes the independent generation, assembly, and storage of the many parts of the complete BE model possible. Thus, significant memory and CPU-time reductions are achieved in avoiding working with an explicit global system of equations. Further CPU-time reduction is obtained by employing a matrix-copy option for repeated subregions. Several applications will illustrate the ability of this algorithm to analyze CNT-based composites.

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Keywords

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