Multi-scale modeling of carbon nanotube reinforced polymers using irregular tessellation technique

• Multi-scale modeling is developed to obtain mechanical properties of CNTRP.
• Irregular tessellation technique is developed on the basis of stochastic approach.
• Based on multiscale modeling, a new formulation is developed to obtain elastic modulus of CNTRP.
• All effective parameters at both meso and macro levels are treated as random parameters.

A multi-scale modeling approach to extract mechanical properties of CNTRP emphasizing on the effective parameters associated with meso- and micro-scale is developed. Investigated material region at macro scale is regularly tessellated into constitutive blocks. Assigning random CNT volume fractions to each block, non-uniform dispersion of CNT is modeled. Irregular tessellation technique based on Voronoi method and Bayes algorithm is employed to partition the RVE at meso scale into constitutive polygons containing one single aggregated CNTs. Mechanical properties of the tessellated regions are extracted by a modified micromechanics rules addressing local positions of aggregates in the material region. A bounding technique accounting for non-straight shape of CNT is utilized to consider any arbitrary shapes of wavy CNT. The obtained results of modeling are compared with experimental observations. A novel formulation is developed taking into account all inconsistencies attributed to CNTRPs.