Representative elementary volume

About: Representative elementary volume is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4105 publications have been published within this topic receiving 86863 citations.

Enhanced continuum poromechanics to account for adsorption induced swelling of saturated isotropic microporous materials

Abstract: Poromechanics offers a consistent theoretical framework for describing the mechanical response of porous solids fully or partially saturated with a fluid phase. When dealing with fully saturated microporous materials, which exhibit pores of the nanometer size, effects due to adsorption and confinement of the fluid molecules in the smallest pores must be accounted for. From the mechanical point of view, these phenomena result into volumetric deformations of the porous solid, the so-called “swelling” phenomenon. The present work investigates how the poromechanical theory may be refined in order to describe such adsorption and confinement induced effects in microporous solids. Poromechanics is revisited in the context of isotropic microporous materials with generic pore size distributions. The new formulation introduces an effective pore pressure, defined as a thermodynamic variable at the representative volume element scale (mesoscale), which is related to the overall mechanical work of the confined fluid. Accounting for the thermodynamic equilibrium of the system, we demonstrate that the effective pore pressure depends on macroscopic variables, such as the bulk fluid pressure, the temperature and the total and excess adsorbed quantity of fluid. As an illustrating example, we apply the model to compute strains and variations of porosity in the case of the methane and carbon dioxide sorption on coal. Agreement with experimental data found in the literature is observed.

A novel material degradation model for unidirectional CFRP composites

Abstract: A novel material degradation model (MDM), which is an essential component of progressive damage models for failure analysis of composite structures, is proposed based on the representative volume element (RVE) method. In this model, a material degradation rule accounting for seven failure modes in a modified Hashin-type failure criterion is proposed. This rule determines the mechanical parameters that are degraded when a failure occurs. The degradation factors of these parameters are calculated from the RVE models for perfect and damaged materials corresponding to the seven failure modes, which are based on the fundamental properties of transverse isotropic fibers and isotropic matrix. To verify the proposed method, the calculated MDMs are used in the progressive failure analyses of open-hole laminates made of three types of CFRP composites under tensile and compressive loadings. Furthermore, the failure analyses of four kinds of double-lap single-bolted joint structures with various layups and geometry dimensions are also conducted under tensile loading. The numerical predictions of failure loads, failure patterns and load-displacement curves are compared to the experimental results. Good agreement between the model predictions and the experimental results demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed MDM for the progressive damage analyses of open-hole laminates and composite bolted joints.

Evaluation and validation of equivalent properties of macro fibre composites for piezoelectric transducer modelling

Abstract: Piezoelectric transducers based on macro fibre composites (MFCs) are widely used for energy harvesting, actuation and sensing because of the high conformability, reliability and strong piezoelectric effect of MFCs. Analytical or numerical modelling of the heterogeneous MFC as a homogenous material with equivalent properties is usually required to predict the performance of the transducers. However, the equivalent properties reported in the literature are not suitable for this purpose. This work proposes an equal power-output method to numerically evaluate the equivalent properties of d31 type MFCs for piezoelectric transducer modelling. Taking energy harvesting application as a study case, it departs from the traditional method by applying electric assumptions that ensure the equal voltage, electric charge, and thus equal power output between the heterogeneous and homogeneous MFCs. The equivalent properties were characterised through the finite element (FE) analysis of the MFC's representative volume element (RVE), which is the minimum periodic unit in the MFC and takes account all the constitutes. The validity of these equivalent properties for energy harvesting transducer modelling was verified by FE modelling as well as experimental testing. The application of the equivalent properties for actuation and sensing transducer modelling was analysed and validated. FE modelling results showed that a homogeneous RVE with the equivalent properties accurately simulated the energy harvesting and actuation behaviours of the heterogeneous RVE. The simulated power output of MFC-based strain energy harvesters matched the mean experimental results with a mean error of 2.5%. When used for actuation, the MFC produced a free strain of 0.93 μ e / V , which is close to the manufacturer specification.