Paper number 698

GENERAL FORMS OF UNIVERSAL CONNECTIONS OF ELASTIC FIBROUS COMPOSITES

T. CHEN and Q.-S. ZHENG

Department of Civil Engineering, National Cheng Kung University,
Tainan 70101, Taiwan Department of Engineering Mechanics
Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084

Summary

We explore the universal connections between the overall moduli of elastic fibrous composites. For any medium that can be represented by certain characterization functions, we show that its effective modulus tensors follow similar constraints as those for Hill's connections for a two-phase fibrous composite. Some new standpoints are proposed, which reveal that the connections remain valid for media containing cavities or rigid inclusions. In addition, connections are devised to accomodate the case in which the composite consists of phases with identical elgen-moduli. We show that, in this particular case, it often provides additional constraints to the overall moduli of the composite.

Keywords

effective moduli, universal connections, anisotropy, elastic fibrous composites.