Micromechanics of interfacial thermal stresses in fiber reinforced composites

This paper develops a generic 2D micromechanical model that deal with the interfacial thermal stresses in fiber reinforced composites with randomly packed fibers of different sizes and thermoelastic properties by successive superposition of the solution of a single fiber embedded in a matrix. This approach reduces the complicated micromechanical model to a system of linear algebraic equations using the perturbation technique. The accuracy of current approach is verified by comparing it with the existing analytical solution. The micromechanics model is then applied to analyze periodically and randomly packing fiber reinforced composites. Analysis results show that the effect of a single fiber is localized and there is an optimal elastic mismatch of fiber and matrix where the interfacial hoop stress is insensitive to the fiber packing arrangement and the fiber volume fraction.