A finite element analysis study of micromechanical interfacial characteristics of metal matrix composites

This paper reports a finite element study of effect of volume fraction of SiC and diameter of the fiber on interfacial stress/strain characteristics of 6061 Al/SiC metal matrix composites. The tensile behaviour of the composite is simulated by using finite element method. To simulate the tensile behaviour of the composite, the unit cell model is developed in ANSYS 5.4 and appropriate boundary conditions were applied on the model. An attempt is made to study the influence of fiber diameter and volume fraction of the fiber on the stress transfer from matrix to fiber. In the analysis, it is found that the fiber diameter plays an important role in the debonding and the results show that debonding is more pronounced in the interfacial element near the axis of symmetry. The debonding initiated purely by the shear and maximum shear stress occurs just inside the model at some distance from the free end of the unit cell and it propagate as the load increases.