Computational Modelling of Composite Materials Reinforced by Glass Fibers

Composite materials reinforced by micro particles are one of the topics of interest of researchers. Properties of fiber composites reinforced by long fibers significantly depend on the selection of fiber and matrix. By increasing length of fibers, the reinforcement is more effective at load carrying. In this paper the Method of Continuous Source Functions (MCSF) and Trefftz Radial Basis Functions (TRBF) will be presented. They are boundary meshless methods which do not need any mesh. The TRBF are source functions having their source points outside the domain. Special attention will be given to the application of the TRBF in the form of dipoles to the simulation of composites reinforced by fibres of finite length with large aspect ratio. In linear problems, only nodes on the domain boundaries and a set of source functions in points outside the domain are necessary to satisfy boundary conditions. Finally we will show MCSF to modelling of reinforced composites with glass fiber and epoxy matrix. For the sake of simplicity we consider only a patch of non-overlaying rows of fibers.