Numerical studies on the effective shear modulus of particle reinforced composites with an inhomogeneous inter-phase

Numerical studies on the effective shear modulus of particle reinforced composites with an inhomogeneous inter-phase are performed. The influences of many parameters to the equivalent shear modulus of composites are carefully analyzed, including the inter-phase thickness, variation of interfacial properties, boundary conditions and volume fraction of particles, etc. Numerical results show that the Poisson ratio can be assumed as a constant across the whole inter-phase zone in the computation. The form of property variation across the inter-phase also greatly affects the effective shear modulus of composite. Numerical results predicted by the rigid boundary conditions are remarkably higher than those by the free boundary conditions and the exact solutions. The reasonability and exactness of the available models for predicting the effective shear modulus of composites are accessed by the numerical results in the present work.