Statistical distribution of forces in stressed 2-D low-density materials with random microstructures

When a low-density random structure is loaded, the struts inside will not be subject to the same forces because of structural inhomogeneities. The probability distributions of the internal forces in 2-D elastic random structures under axial and shear loadings are investigated in this work using a purposely-built loading setup. The results are compared to the predictions from a statistical-mechanics-based theory in which an entropy functional is used to represent the structural randomness.