Homogenization and thermoelastic analysis of heterogenous materials with regular and random microstructures

Homogenized material properties of dual-phase representative volume elements (RVEs) with regular and random microstructures are numerically estimated and their characteristics to the particle orientation and the microstructure morphology are investigated. The random morphology description functions (RMDF) based constructive approach is employed to create a variety of morphologically realistic microstructures of dual-phase heterogeneous materials which are characterized by the volume fractions and the interconnected network of two phases by simply adjusting the level cut of a Gaussian random field. Furthermore, the microscopic thermomechanical responses of dual-phase heterogeneous composite beam are compared with those obtained using the homogenized material properties and investigated with respect to the microstructure morphology. In the regular microstructures, it is found that the homogenized material properties are significantly influenced by the particle orientation and the homogenized thermomechanical responses show the reasonable agreement with the microscopic responses. Meanwhile, in the random microstructures, it is observed that the variations of homogenized material properties and microscopic thermomechanical responses to the microstructure morphology decrease as the complexity of morphology increases.