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.

FE investigation of the effect of particle distribution on the uniaxial stress–strain behaviour of particulate reinforced metal-matrix composites

Abstract: A multi-particle 2D finite element model of a 20% particulate reinforced metal-matrix composite was developed on a statistical basis taking into account the correlations between the position, size and orientation of the ceramic particles in the matrix. The stress–strain curves in tension and compression given by the clustered multi-particle model are compared with the curves obtained from one-particle unit cell simulations. It is shown that clustering of particles increases the plastic strain accumulated in the matrix leading to a higher strain hardening and thus to a higher flow stress. The size of the representative volume element (RVE) should be at least equal to the correlation length of the geometrically relevant correlation functions, which was ∼2.4 times larger than the average interparticle distance for the experimentally studied case. Reasonable agreement is obtained between computed residual strains and data available in the literature.

Effective Permeability of Media with a Dense Network of Long and Micro Fractures

Abstract: This article presents a new methodology to estimate the effective permeability of random fractured media of any anisotropy containing both microfractures and a large number of long fractures crosscutting the representative volume element. The fractures are replaced by fictitious permeable materials for which the tangential permeability is deduced from a Poiseuille flow. A self-consistent scheme is proposed to derive the macroscopic permeability. On the one hand, the contribution of long fractures to the effective permeability writes by simple superposition of the fracture tangential permeabilities. On the other hand, the contribution of microfractures needs to resort to auxiliary problems requiring the computation of second-order Hill (or Eshelby) tensors related to ellipsoids embedded in an anisotropic matrix, for which a complete procedure is detailed. The effect of the microfracture normal permeability is put in evidence in the upscaling scheme and analyzed. In particular, it is shown that it must be chosen large enough to allow the connections between families. Examples are finally developed and compared to numerical simulations in the 2D case.